INDUSTRIAL ACTION is threatened from today at the Connaught Telegraphnewspaper in Co Mayo.
Members of the trade union Unite are protesting over a management decision to outsource pre-press (typesetting and graphic design) work to a firm in the midlands. Management is offering statutory redundancy to the seven workers affected.
The Unite union says the offer is “derisory” given the loyalty and long service of many of the workers who will be made redundant by the cost-cutting measure.
Unite regional officer Claire Keane said the workers “have received no pay rise in the past four years and voluntarily reduced to a three-day working week in order to make their contribution to cost savings.
“The production and publishing of a newspaper is a job that is at the heart of its function within a community. The closure will mean a break from the local area and the loss of an important link with those the paper claims it still wants to serve.” The union has called on management to reassess its decision.
Members of the National Union of Journalists at the paper, while calling on management to give their colleagues a “better deal”, won’t be participating in the industrial action.
A spokesman for the paper’s management said yesterday no redundancy notices had been issued. “Management is prepared to continue negotiations in an effort to achieve a settlement of the dispute,” he said.
“We are prepared to enter conciliation talks through the Regional Newspapers and Printers Association of Ireland,” he said. He added that despite today’s industrial action, the company expected to bring out a newspaper this week as normal.
Founded in 1828, the Connaught Telegraphis one of the few remaining family-owned regional newspapers in Ireland.
