News / 14.11.2012

Trade Unions: Stop media job cuts now!

The unions say the publishers have no economic reasons for the harsh dismissals of their staff, but the redundancies reduce the quality of their journalism. Most of the media companies are still making good results, in spite of difficult economic situation and diminishing turnover.

Short-sighted profit maximation in this situation is a wrong policy, the unions say. Business owners need to focus on new product conception and investments rather than savings and job cuts; otherwise they endanger Finnish communications and journalism as a public good.

Since 2008 more than 800 jobs have in Finland been lost in Journalism. At the moment there are co-determination negotiations going on in some 12 media companies. The publisher of the daily Turun Sanomat on November 13 announced fifth round of layoffs in three years, during which the editorial staff has been reduced 40 percent.

In addition, the Union of Journalists in Finland, the printing industry workers Team as well as other media industry unions demand the government to withdraw or compensate the new 8% value-added tax introduced to newspapers and magazines from the beginning of this year. The decline in purchasing power could lead to a number of newspaper closures next year.


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