Telegraph staff vote for strike action

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Seventy-six per cent of NUJ members at the Telegraph Group have voted yes to possible strike action.

The union claims the ballot was a result of anger among staff who feel managers have ignored their concerns.

The NUJ says the controversial move to the integrated Victoria newsroom, along with a raft of redundancies, changes to shift patterns and extra duties being placed on staff, have contributed to a mood of fear and frustration.

NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said: "The blame lies entirely in the way management has gone about making some pretty fundamental changes to the way in which the Telegraph operates.

"For months we have been seeking meetings and looking for negotiations about the changes, all of which have been ignored and it has pressed on regardless."

Mr Dear added that the union is demanding that changes to staff terms and conditions must be negotiated and said that members will meet later this week to decide on an appropriate course of action if, in the meantime, their request is not met.

The Telegraph's phased move toward operating as a seamless digital and print publication coincided with 54 journalists being dumped by the paper.

"There are a lot a of positive things you can say about integration and we, for one, are in favour of it, but what you have to do is have staffing levels commensurate with the needs to operate across a whole number of platforms," Dear added.

"We think, in making these job cuts, it [the Telegraph] is failing to ensure that it has enough staff to maintain quality across all of these platforms.

"At the moment there are trials in convergence and integration at places like the Guardian, where it has been shown that, rather than less staff, you actually need, in many cases, more staff to make it work effectively.

"One hundred and thirty people have gone from the Telegraph, 54 are journalists, so they [Telegraph management] want the remaining journalists to do more work across more platforms. The inevitable consequence of that is failing quality."