Difficult times at the Post and Mail
YOUR roll call of dishonour over redundancies in our industry missed the 70 plus jobs that went at Trinity Mirror titles in Birmingham and Coventry — announced last August and delivered in November.
It was a major blow to the journalists concerned working on The Birmingham Post, Birmingham Mail, Sunday Mercury, Coventry Telegraph and a cluster of associated weekly titles.
A region-wide editorial staff of approximately 300 was reduced by about a quarter. District offices covering many of the communities surrounding Birmingham were closed. Now the majority of staff work in our merged newsroom in Fort Dunlop for the full range of print titles and online versions.
It was a difficult time as almost all editorial staff were put on notice of redundancy and had to apply for new, admittedly slightly higher paid, jobs in the new set-up.
NUJ members overwhelmingly supported industrial action if there were compulsory redundancies. But in the event the company was slightly oversubscribed with volunteers. Trinity Mirror accepted all applications, meaning staff numbers were reduced by even more than the 65, plus five vacancies, initially sought.
Since then a handful of staff have left, and not all have been replaced, leading to a further reduction in numbers.
Neil Elkes and Martin Warrillow
Joint NUJ FoCs
Birmingham Post and Mail