Johnston Press staff have been told that £500,000 has been set aside to increase the salaries of around 300 journalists who have taken on “significant extra responsibility” in newly created roles.
The announcement was made by chief executive Ashley Highfield in an email about the Newsroom of the Future “transformation project”.
Highfield said in an email to staff: “In addition to the local annual pay awards – which everyone in editorial will receive – we have also set aside a further £500,000 which will be used to increase salary levels – for example where significant extra responsibility has been taken on in a new role in the structure or where we have identified pay structure anomalies.
“This will impact to varying degrees across our Publishing Units, however we do expect more than 300 of our editorial team members to benefit from this over and above the annual pay award. Our plan is to implement these salary increases in the coming weeks and months as our deployment plans continue and we will be engaging at a local level to confirm the details.”
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He added: “Not everyone, of course, will benefit directly from this investment. We are focussing it where we have identified a clear disparity between a journalist's current pay and what we are expecting of them in the new structure.
“If you don't receive an additional increase in this instance it doesn't mean we don't value your enormous hard work, the great job you are doing or the change you have taken on board.”
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