Fairfax staff take protected industrial action, following executive pay rises and email blunder
Cartoon by Canberra Times ‘s David Pope
Fairfax staff will take protected industrial action next week and step up a public awareness campaign after staff yesterday rejected a pay offer from management which comprised a merit pool of bonus payments but no general pay rise for editorial staff.
Today Fairfax staff across Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane are implementing a tactic of “performance of work in a manner different for that in which it is customary for it to be performed” – which includes wearing black “FairGoFairfax” t-shirts and a possible ‘work to rule’ 1pm lunch time walk out, ahead of a meeting with management on Tuesday.
Tensions at the publisher grew yesterday after it was revealed the company had posted a $224.4m net profit, with four top managers receiving $2.4m in additional performance shares at a time when the formal offer was zero per cent.
The situation was inflamed after an email from Fairfax Counsel Gail Hambly was accidentally sent by PR Sue Cato to journalists justifying the move by saying the “management was prepared to back itself to achieve set targets – something the journalists are refusing to do”.
In the wake of those remarks members of the Media and Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) met and voted to reject an informal offer by the publisher that would have seen staggered two per cent pay rises with most of the money going into a “merit pool” which editors distribute at their discretion.
“Meetings of members this afternoon rejected the company’s offer,” said an MEAA spokesman. “We will be meeting with the company next week and members will be considering industrial action in the claim.”
According to the resolution passed yesterday the members also asked the union to inform the company that it would take a protected action stopwork meeting next Thursday and of its intention to take “other industrial measures” over the next two weeks “unless Fairfax Media comes back to staff with a meaningful pay offer that adequately reflects the current circumstances of the company”.
The resolution also decries the recent management bonuses noting: “We are surprised and disappointed that management of this company feels it’s appropriate to give themselves such lucrative rewards while at the same time lecturing staff about the need for stringent cuts to our pay and conditions.”
In May staff at Farifax centres staged a 24-hour strike after management proposed huge cuts to the photographic department, and announced a new deal with Getty Images to provide picture services as part of huge cost-cutting measures which senior managers receive performance bonuses for delivering.
Fairfax has been contacted for comment.
Nic Christensen
topics
awareness campaign
Fairfax
Fairfax Media
Gail Hambly
industrial action
journalism
MEAA
Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance
profit
strike
union
How long do you think before we see this in ad agencies?
User ID not verified.
It would seem to outsiders that Fairfax management do not understand what they are doing. Especially when someone in the business office interferes with how journalists do their job. May be, as their expertise is in counting, they might like to calculate the damage being done to the company by the people who are stuffing things up. They will need a big calculator.
User ID not verified.
“performance of work in a manner different for that in which it is customary for it to be performed”
read: sober
joking. give em a bloody fair go wouldya management ya flamin’ galahs
User ID not verified.
“We are surprised and disappointed that management of this company feels it’s appropriate to give themselves such lucrative rewards while at the same time lecturing staff about the need for stringent cuts to our pay and conditions.”
Replace the Fairfax staff with the Australian electorate and Fairfax Management with the Federal Government and it’s the same. Must be the way things are done all over this country now.
User ID not verified.
Happened a long, long time ago. Union? Which union?!!
Unless you were being sarcastic, in which case, I find what you said quite funny.
User ID not verified.
Calling all good journo’s and product people at Fairfax! Leave, set up on your own, you will win: do it! Fck the board and their cronies: they have nothing.
User ID not verified.
If all the good journos at the Fairfax left and joined The Guardian, its quite possible the company would die completely within 12-18 months and we might have Fairfax v2.0 resurrected
User ID not verified.
Good luck to the journos. Here’s hoping they take the lessons learned from their own experience with greedy executives and apply it to their stories on the wider economy. Every sector faces the same tsunami of corporate bullshit about the need to squash workers’ pay, despite record profits and stratospheric executive bonuses. It’s long past time journos applied the blowtorch to hollow, easily discredited claims about the “need” to keep wages low while raising executive remuneration.
User ID not verified.
@ Brian Mitchell. Not all Fairfax journos wages are on low wages. The Australian reported yesterday that Joe Aston, the gossip columnist for the AFR , is on a $225,000 a year package. I presume other Fairfax employees are on similar deals.
Apparently, it’s not enough for Aston. He approached News Corp asking for $400,000 but they did not take up the “offer” according to the Media section in The Australian.
User ID not verified.