Job losses loom at Turun Sanomat

UJF editorial branch says job cuts unreasonable in light of paper’s profits

Turun Sanomat, Southwest Finland’s leading daily, is starting employer-employee negotiations this week expected to result in further staff cutbacks.

The paper’s online edition referred vaguely to “possible measures” resulting from the talks that could affect the paper’s entire editorial and production work.

But layoffs, redundancies and reductions of full-time work could hit some 26 staff members, including up to 10 in editorial.

The reasons for the cuts, according to the paper, are poorer economic prospects generally but especially in the media sector.

But the UJF editorial branch at Turun Sanomat says that the looming staff cuts are unreasonable in view of the paper’s consistent annual profits. In 2013, the capital income of paper’s owners was some €10 million.

The branch said it is deeply concerned over whether Turun Sanomat will remain a quality, competitive and appealing regional paper if its editorial staff lose 10 employees.

The number of the paper’s journalists has anyway been severely reduced in recent years, the UJF branch points out. It is roughly half what it was in 2009. Since then six rounds of employer-employee negotiations have slashed jobs.

The union branch says that permanent work at the paper has often been replaced by fixed-term contract work. Jobs have been cut but the workload has increased, particularly the paper’s digital output.

The branch has appealed to Turun Sanomat’s owners to moderate their profit targets amidst difficult economic circumstances and to find less drastic ways of cutting costs than sacking staff.