Australia: Journalists to strike against job cuts

A Fairfax spokeswoman announced that both papers would come out on Friday, but refused to comment on whether weekend papers would be affected.

Fairfax, which owns many of the highest circulation newspapers in both countries, increased its profit by 46.8% in the year to June 2008, to AU$386.9 million, but is claiming it needs to reduce costs to increase profits even further. Of the jobs to go, 160 have been announced for New Zealand (100 further redundancies, and non-replacement of 60 staff who had recently left or been made redundant) with the rest across the Australian Fairfax stable.

"This was a motion that arose spontaneously from the floor of the meeting because people are angry at the way the company has treated them both in terms of Enterprise Agreement negotiations and also the redundancy announcements," said Michael Bachelard, a senior journalist at The Age.

"Age staff are passionate about their masthead and their readers, and are disappointed that the managers of the company appear willing to sacrifice quality journalism for the sake of the bottom line."

An email to all Fairfax staff from the CEO announcing the job cuts and restructuring was leaked to The Australian, a competitor to the Fairfax papers.