Journalists on strike in Australia after newspaper job cuts announced

UPDATE: March 17, 2016, 5:49 p.m. AEDT with statement from Fairfax management.

Journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and Melbourne's The Age voted to strike Thursday after the outlets' management, Fairfax Media, announced more than 100 staff could lose their jobs.

On Thursday morning, journalists in Sydney and Melbourne were notified the equivalent of 120 full-time workers would have to go. "We will shortly enter a consultation period with staff and the MEAA on a proposal to reduce costs across News and Business in the Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms by the equivalent of 120 full-time employees," Fairfax Media editorial director Sean Aylmer told staff in an email.

"We believe that we can do this through redundancies, tightening contributor budgets and reducing travel costs and expenses."

Like many newspaper companies, Fairfax has endured significant personnel cuts in recent years as the global news business has lost customers to digital platforms. In a restructuring announced in 2012, 1,900 staff were removed across the company, and further redundancies have been made in the years following.

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Following the email, staff from the three mastheads voted to go on strike until first shift Monday to register their disgust with the proposal. The action will affect the Friday and weekend editions of the papers, as well as their websites.

"The company will continue to publish across print and digital as usual," Fairfax management said in an emailed statement Thursday afternoon.

Sources at Fairfax told Mashable Australia staff had no idea further cuts were on the way. The mood inside the newsroom as the strike was discussed was described as "very angry and wild."

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Close to 700 people currently work across the three newspapers, including in the press gallery at Parliament House in Canberra, a spokesperson for the journalists union Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) confirmed to Mashable Australia. It is unclear what portion of that number have walked off the job Thursday.

"It's the staff on the newsroom floor who have driven the transition to digital and through all the challenges continued to produce high quality independent journalism," MEAA CEO Paul Murphy said in a statement. "And this is the reward. Yet another savage cut to editorial.

"We will be fighting for every job."

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In its statement, Fairfax management added that staff at The Canberra Times and the Brisbane Times had joined the other papers in taking "unprotected industrial action." 

"We are operating in an ever-changing highly competitive media environment which involves rapid evolution of our publishing model," said Fairfax Media CEO Greg Hywood. "The initiatives we have proposed today are part of that adaptation and are necessary to sustain high quality journalism."

It looks like the newsroom disagrees.

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