Journalists at Reach have accepted a 2% pay rise backdated to 1 April and other concessions said to be worth £1m.
Reach is the UK’s largest news publisher in terms of audience size and (as of 2024) employs some 2,587 production and editorial staff (as well as 680 sales and commercial and 312 involved in administration).
In 2024 its total salary bill was £200m on turnover of £538.6m (down 5.3%) and it grew operating profit by 6% to £102.3m.
The 2% salary increase equates to a £4m rise in costs if headcount were to remain constant.
Members of the Reach NUJ Group Chapel have voted to accept the pay offer. But a consultation with NUJ members found “a clear level of disappointment and frustration particularly with the 2% across-the-board uplift in salaries”, according to a union note shared with staff.
The note added: “However, despite the tough economic background in our industry and the wider economy, the NUJ still managed to achieve some hard-won editorial-only concessions to enhance the overall employment package for Reach journalists.”
These concessions (said to be worth £1m annually) include:
- “The right to decent additional payments for bank holiday working”
- “Historic underfunding of photographic/videographic roles have been corrected and an important adjustment made to the pay of content editors.
- And progress on the Career Development Framework (CDF), which provides standardised pay scales.
The union said: “It is worth noting that in the partial CDF rollout to date, around 70% of those participating achieved salary increases of between £1,400 and £4,500.”
The UK advertising market grew to record estimated total spend of £42.5bn last year. But most of the new money spent on advertising in the UK is going to Google and Facebook which together made around £24bn (around twenty times more than every UK national and regional newsbrand combined).
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