Newsquest is proposing to cut another 25 journalism jobs on its Glasgow-based daily titles – the fourth round of redundancies on the titles in 14 months.
The tiles affected include the Herald, Sunday Herald, The National and the Evening Times.
The cuts come despite the fact that the US-based company has seen growing profits in Scotland. The latest accounts for Newsquest (Herald and Times) Ltd show that it made an operating profit of £11.9m in 2014 (up from £9.1m) on turnover flat year on year at £53.7m.
According to the NUJ the latest cuts mean that Newsquest will have cut the number of journalists working on the Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times titles by half since buying them in 2003.
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NUJ Scotland organiser Paul Holleran said: “This is not a clever way of running a publishing company and there is a serious risk to the future of the newspapers in this stable.
"We are concerned that a further reduction in quality is inevitable as talented journalists lose their jobs and those remaining struggle with an increasing workload to gather and produce news and features that help sell the product.
“Newsquest executives and board members need to take a new look at the way they are running the business. Pursuing unrealistic profit targets by constantly making cuts, instead of looking at innovative ways to improve the business, are not sustainable in the long term.
“The NUJ will endeavour to work with the new management team, which has inherited this situation, in mitigating the loss of jobs and damage to the titles. However, we are not prepared to accept blatant compulsory redundancies and there is little doubt the chapel will stand up for that principle.
“I am sure we can put into place maximum consultation to ensure a restructured editorial team which provides support for the workforce while producing decent newspapers but Newsquest needs to work flexibly with the union on a number of fronts, including acceptable redundancy terms for those at risk."
In September last year the editors of the Sunday Herald and Evening Times both took voluntary redundancy.
In August 20 editorial job cut were announced at the Herald and Times titles.
Another ten editorial jobs were cut on the titles in March 2015.
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