It just gets worse at Express group
NUJ MEMBERS at Express Newspapers are suffering the worst cutbacks of all national papers.
Proprietor Richard Desmond wants to get rid of 36 staff subs out of 62, as well as 33 long-term regular casual subs and 17 other casuals.
On top of this, the Express is closing its final salary pension scheme, claiming it is too costly.
Only a third of staff are members of the scheme, which had already been closed to new employees. The union is negotiating over a replacement money purchase scheme.
The company is paying redundancy compensation of only three weeks’ salary per year of service, compared with the national paper standard of four weeks’ pay.
Under the new production scheme reporters will write copy “to fit” directly into pages, where it will be checked by “rewriters” — the remaining 26 subs, with a team of 12 each night. Up to now there have been about 30 subs each night. The rewriters will work a nine-day fortnight instead of the present four-day week.
To complicate matters, the work will be done in InDesign and a new Woodwing editorial system will replace the old Quark Publishing System software.
Staff say this will make things worse. The NUJ chapel has written to Richard Desmond saying: “The system does not reduce by a single keystroke the labour needed to produce the newspapers, contrary to what you may have been told.
“The system will do severe damage to the reputation and, eventually, the finances of your newspapers. Circulation will be hit if deadlines are not met. Obviously you will lose revenue because of this.
“Advertisers will begin to question the value of your titles which will inevitably be more prone to mistakes and legal challenges. Again, this will lead to loss of revenue.
“We are open to discussions with you.” There had been no reply as the Journalist went to press.