Walkout at Sydney Morning Herald, Age and Australian Financial Review on day move to slash 125 editorial jobs is unveiled

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Journalists at Fairfax Media have voted to go on strike for seven days – including the crucial federal budget week – after management announced a quarter of all newsroom jobs were to be cut.

At urgent stop-work meetings in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, described as “emotional and furious”, staff agreed to walk out for a week to send a message to management that it needed to negotiate with them before implementing such significant cuts.

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Journalists on the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age in Melbourne and the Australian Financial Review walked off their jobs on Wednesday afternoon in protest at the drastic cut of 125 full-time jobs that was announced in the morning.

The strike, if it continues for the full seven days, is likely to damage Fairfax’s coverage of the federal budget, which is due to be handed down in Canberra on Tuesday. Fairfax usually has one of the largest contingents from any Australian media organisation in the budget lockup.

Bridie Smith (@BridieSmith) News just in: Fairfax Media staff are out. @theage & @smh strike for 7 days. Will reconvene in 72 hrs #FairgoFairfax pic.twitter.com/8YJChqsuQ1

Lisa Visentin (@LisaVisentin) SMH walk out. We're on strike for 7 days. 125 jobs to go #SavetheSMH pic.twitter.com/edunE4ge7Z

Miki Perkins (@perkinsmiki) Empty Age newsroom. On strike. #fairgofairfax #qualityjournalism pic.twitter.com/BQdASzHIcu

Fairfax’s reporters in the parliamentary bureau in Canberra were pictured walking out of the building.



Alice Workman (@workmanalice) Out they go #FairGoFairfax pic.twitter.com/GCgmt2SJga

Sydney Morning Herald staff walked out of their Pyrmont office about 3pm.

The paper’s state political editor, Sean Nicholls, described the cuts as an “existential threat” to the Herald and the Age. He said Sydney and Melbourne were now at risk of becoming one-paper towns, dominated by the Murdoch press.

“Proportionally, this is an unprecedented cut in Fairfax newsrooms. It is the worst cut we have ever seen in our history,” Nicholls said.

“People are shocked, people are dismayed and appalled that once again, despite several days or a week of consultation, management has failed to come up with a solution other than slashing one in four jobs in the metropolitan Fairfax newsrooms,” he said.

Nicholls said the timing of the strike, spanning the federal budget, should send a message to management and the broader public.

“Think about coverage of a federal budget without the balance and objectivity that Fairfax provides every single year, and has done for decades,” he said. “That is what is at stake.

“This threatens the very existence of our newspapers, let alone the very quality of our newspapers. The one-week strike action should be a huge wake-up to this company on what’s at stake.

“We’re looking at 125 journalists jobs – that’s one in four of every Fairfax metropolitan newspaper in Australia. That is shocking and we condemn management who have tried to cut their way to quality, which is absolutely impossible, and the fact that they have failed again to try and find an alternative solution.”

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The investigative reporter Kate McClymont said the decision to strike for a week had not happened for years. “We care deeply about journalism,” she said.

One journalist told Guardian Australia: “It’s the longest strike I can remember in recent history. But it was unanimous and it’s what the floor wanted. Management needs to sit down with us and talk properly.”

The Brisbane Times, an online only publication, has joined colleagues at the SMH, the Age, the AFR and the WA Today and gone out on strike.

Cameron Atfield (@CameronAtfield) The @brisbanetimes house committee has just passed this motion. #fairgofairfax pic.twitter.com/x8wsiGhN82

Canberra Times journalists will not go on strike, but the house committee passed a resolution that they would not complete work usually done by staff at other mastheads.

James Hall (@James_P_Hall) We at The Canberra Times stand in solidarity with our friends and colleagues at The Age and SMH. #FairGoFairfax pic.twitter.com/kLTFwL8bsK

Fairfax staff said the decision to axe 125 jobs was “the largest proportional cut to our newsrooms in recent memory”. They said they will also go out for seven days.

SMH political reporter and MEAA house committee member, Michael Koziol, said: “We work hard and do our jobs every day and it’s the company’s job to make that pay.”

“Every time they fail to do that, they come after us. We can’t absorb any more job losses and keep doing high quality news as readers rightly expect.”

The Herald’s science editor, Marcus Strom, warned the Fairfax board that it could not cut its way to growth.

“We want our readers to subscribe, and we want the board to match what our readers are doing and invest in journalism,” Strom told Guardian Australia.



Fairfax management said the metropolitan newspapers SMH, the Age and the AFR would be published as usual for the next seven days and the websites would keep operating.



“We are disappointed in the decision by some of our masthead journalists to take unprotected industrial action for seven days after a month-long consultation period about necessary changes in our Metro Media business,” a spokesman said.

“But it is not the first time we have had industrial action. As in the previous episodes, we will continue to publish across print and digital as usual.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fairfax Media staff in Sydney walk off the job on Wednesday afternoon. Photograph: Christopher Knaus/The Guardian

Fairfax’s editorial director, Sean Aylmer, outlined the cuts in an email to staff on Wednesday. “While we will be looking across all parts of the newsroom, at the end of the redundancy program we expect there will be significantly fewer editorial management, video, presentation and section writer roles,” he said.



The company also plans to use more contributors but to pay them per article rather than per word.

Fairfax staff last went on strike in March 2016 when similar cuts were made across the three mastheads.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the media union, said staff were “disgusted” at the company’s decision to cut 25% of its journalists.

“In doing so, the company will be failing its audiences and leaving the journalists who remain behind having to work harder and harder to plug the gaps,” said Paul Murphy, the MEAA’s chief executive.

“None of the other parts of the Fairfax business are worth anything without the journalism and yet it is the journalism that Fairfax always cuts. The editorial staff are really angry. They think the company has made a terrible decision that is not in the best interests of the company, its audience or its staff.”

The MEAA has warned that the cuts are so deep they mean that Fairfax will have to reduce covering significant areas of Australian life. The company signalled last month that some state-based rounds and arts reporting will be scaled back as the company concentrates on key areas such as politics, entertainment and crime.

In resolutions passed at the stop-work meetings across the country, editorial staff rejected the cuts proposed by the company, said they will not accept any forced redundancies, want any voluntary rounds to be open for at least three weeks (as opposed to the company’s one week) and want senior management to take a 25% pay cut.

Union members told Guardian Australia Fairfax staff were well aware that management may seek an order from the Fair Work Commission to stop the unprotected industrial action.

In the event the Fair Work Commission issued an order, a decision to continue unprotected industrial action would risk fines of up to $10,800 for an individual and $54,000 for the union.