Agency members warn over action on 140 job cuts

NUJ members at the Thomson Corporation and Reuters say they are ready to take industrial action over the way managers go about 140 planned journalists’ job cuts if all voluntary routes available are not explored.

A 100-strong Canary Wharf meeting of members from both chapels decided that if management stuck to a timetable of seeking voluntary redundancies for just three weeks and then moving to compulsory redundancies, suspended strike ballots would be activated.

The two organisations merged in May to create the Thomson-Reuter Corporation. The cuts are part of a move that will see 835 jobs axed across the group in a cost-cutting exercise.

Thomson Financial News chapel FOC Frank Prenesti said Europe and the UK would bear the brunt of the cuts in journalists’ jobs. He said worries about the merger had led to an upsurge in NUJ membership with new chapels in Brussels and Paris and new members in Scandinavia, Hungary and Poland. Claims that the merger would expand jobs were “completely bogus,” he said.

NUJ national organiser Barry Fitzpatrick said: “We’ve been telling management for months that they should be meeting with the union so that employees have a say in their treatment. Our members are naturally worried. That’s why they’ve made it very clear that they will campaign strongly against any attempts to force through compulsory redundancies.”

The Journalist is published by the National Union of Journalists