Around 20 staff roles in Irish newsrooms owned by UK media company Reach, including at the Daily Star and The Mirror newspapers are “at risk” as it undergoes restructuring plans.
Reach is the UK’s largest commercial, national and regional news publisher and is the publisher of titles including The Express, The Mirror, Manchester Evening News, Daily Star and Liverpool Echo.
It also owns and publishes Irish editions of UK media titles including the Daily Mirror and the Irish Daily star as well as news websites such as Dublin live, Galway Beo, Belfast Live and Cork Beo.
Reach management met staff today to outline new restructuring plans, which reiterated the message given at a previous staff meeting in August that the company is putting greater focus on its online and digital output, which will impact staffing requirements.
It is understood the new plans will lead to the loss of over 320 positions across the wider Reach publishing operation, with 135 new roles being created, and that in some cases where people are being told their current roles are “at risk”, they can apply for other roles.
The cuts will affect staff in Northern Irish offices too and the precise number of staff roles affected by the restructuring across the island is unclear.
It is also understood a 45-day consultation process is now under way.
Staff across the company were informed by the company’s chief content officer, David Higgerson, that the restructure will lead the company to adopting “a different way of working from top to bottom, as we match our resources to our ambitions” as it puts a new focus on growing digital subscriptions.
The National union of journalists has decried the cuts.
NUJ National Reach Co-Ordinator in the UK Chris Morley said they will be going through the proposals “line by line and engaging to the full in formal consultation to minimise the number of redundancies made”.
“We will be pressing the principle that wherever possible, those who want to stay in the business can do so, while those that want to leave are facilitated to do so without quibble,” Mr Morley said.
Speaking on behalf of NUJ members in the company’s Irish newsrooms, Ian McGuinness confirmed that the union will be meeting management at Reach “as soon as possible” to understand and to “interrogate their proposals”.
He stated that its members will be “kept up to speed every step of the way” and outlined the union is focused on “protecting as many jobs as we possibly can”.
Mr McGuinness added that the union would be ensuring members who remain in Reach have “manageable workloads” and that quality journalism “remains the priority for the remaining members”.