Publisher of P & J cutting 300 staff
The Dundee-based publisher paid £24 million in dividends to shareholders last year, yet is justifying the redundancies by claiming it needs to fill a £10 million budget shortfall.
Half the redundancies will fall on titles bought in 2018 from a Colchester-based company, which does raise questions about the rationale behind the purchase.
The company has given reassurances that the news titles will be protected, though the atmosphere in the newsroom is “grim”, which hardly bodes well for staff retention.
The National Union of Journalists says “These are brutal cuts, and we will robustly defend the jobs of our members.
“Our members are furious both with how the company has handled these redundancies and because they are seeking to make £10m cuts across the business after paying out £24m in dividends to shareholders last year.
“The jobs of hard-working journalists should not be sacrificed to pay the price of extravagant shareholder profits.”
We couldn’t agree more.