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The majority of staff across Nine’s publishing titles, including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, will walk off the job on Friday after last-minute crisis talks, and an improved pay offer was rejected on Thursday evening.
Publishing boss Tory Maguire flew to Melbourne to address staff on Thursday morning, three days after union members – the majority of staff – overwhelmingly voted for a five-day strike from 11am on Friday. Staff will strike for the first time since 2017.
Staff from Nine’s newspapers will walk off the job on Friday after a pay deal could not be agreed.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Maguire and Publishing HR boss Michael Trafford spoke to Melbourne-based staff from The Age and The Australian Financial Review before returning to Sydney to address staff from newsrooms at The Sydney Morning Herald, WAtoday, Brisbane Times and the AFR.
While the strike relates directly to the pay dispute, tensions were raised this week after further details of a recently announced redundancy round were shared by executive editor Luke McIlveen.
Now, staff in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Perth, and those in Paris covering the Olympics, will stop work on Friday, potentially affecting the mastheads’ coverage of the Games and the opening ceremony.
Maguire took questions from the newsrooms after she and her team tabled an improved pay offer late on Wednesday evening following an hours-long meeting with union representatives, with approval from Nine’s chief executive, Mike Sneesby, who is currently in Paris.
Nine’s previous offer of a yearly 2.5 per cent increase over three years was improved to a 3.5/4/3 per cent split across the three-year deal. Maguire said the offer was “as close to [the rate of inflation] as I could”. The Consumer Price Index was 3.6 per cent as of March this year, rising 1 per cent across the quarter.
Recently, News Corp Australia staff agreed to a 3.5 per cent increase over 12 months amid the company’s own round of redundancies. Guardian Australia staff were handed an initial offer of a 4 per cent increase this week.
On Tuesday, McIlveen said 10 to 15 staff would be cut from both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He said six to eight staff would be cut from the shared national team, which houses federal politics, business, world and environmental journalists from both mastheads, as well as the Premium content team [podcasts, visual stories] and the Life team [arts, culture, lifestyle and Traveller], each of these housing about 50 staff.