Thursday, June 16, 2011

Newsquest | In strike, bosses said changing venue

[Strikers dressed as cowboys to spotlight "Wild West" of publishing]

Newsquest managers changed the location -- twice -- for a "think tank'' meeting today, rather than face unionized employees conducting a two-day strike of the Gannett U.K. newspaper subsidiary, a Guardian report says today. The meeting was to include 11 Newsquest managers, says Guardian media columnist Roy Greenslade.

The two-day strike by employees at papers in Sutton and Twickenham is protesting a proposal to close the papers' sports and leisure department, costing nine jobs, according to Greenslade.

The picketers, members of the National Union of Journalists, dressed in cowboy costumes "in order to highlight the Wild West nature of current newspaper ownership," Greenslade said yesterday.

His column continued: "NUJ members are becoming ever more inventive to publicise their plight. Two months ago, journalists in Enfield working for Tindle Newspapers staged a mock funeral as a way of demonstrating to local people the danger their papers were facing."

About Newsquest
The division employs about one in seven of Gannett's 32,600 global employees -- a total of 4,800 -- at 17 dailies and hundreds of weeklies. Newsquest cut nearly 6% of its jobs last year, according to GCI's just-filed annual 10-K statement to U.S. regulators. GCI bought the U.K. operation in the summer of 1999 for about $1.5 billion.

Related: see the NUJ's strike blog.

[Photo: NUJ]

9 comments:

  1. Now that's creative.

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  2. Pickets, not picketers.

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  3. Just pathetic. It's like the children and the dressing up box. Grow up!

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  4. Here's one thing they aren't: sheep.

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  5. Sure they are, they are union sheep. Pay your dues, hit the clown.

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  6. 7:31 Ah, speak positively of a union action, and suddenly the angel of death appears.

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  7. Their leader is McElroy so they have balls.

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  8. Gotta love the Brits. Would-be world conquerors with remnants of colonialism all around the globe and they're still a bunch of feisty lads and lassies. Carry on. Over here we seem to have lost our gumption, beaten, bowed and turned into sheep-like creatures hiding our true thoughts, ever fearful of what's to come. Yep, fear works. So hats off to the Union Jack!

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