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December 5, 2008

Newsquest Glasgow new contracts revealed

By Rachael Gallagher

The NUJ fears that editorial managers at Newsquest‘s Glasgow titles will be forced to re-apply for their jobs at new lower salaries levels as part of the major restructuring going on at the company.

On Wednesday this week all but a handful of journalists working at The Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald were given 90-day redundancy notices and were told to re-apply for their jobs in a new merged newsroom.

New lower salary levels for editorial managers along with changes in shift patterns and new ‘generic’job descriptions are among the initial concerns identified by the NUJ.

Last week NUJ members a the Glasgow titles voted 92 per cent in favour of a strike ballot following the news that Newsquest was seeking new cost savings of £2 million a year.

An NUJ spokesman said that Newsquest are proposing that the new contracts are put on the table immediately. He said: ‘We’re hoping that common sense can kick on and that there’s still a possibility of a negotiated settlement.”

An NUJ survey of staff at the Newsquest titles found that they already feel current staffing levels are placing unacceptable levels of stress on journalists.

In May, Newsquest Glasgow revealed that 20 jobs would be cut in editorial due to ‘poor trading conditions’and that it intended to create ‘one of the world’s most modern multimedia news operations’and integrate the staff of the three newspapers into a 24-hour newsroom, producing print, web and mobile news.

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In a statement on Wednesday the company said that it plans to merge certain newspaper staffs under new editor-in-chief Donald Martin to increase efficiency and “make full use of state-of-the art news production technology now being rolled out”.

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