Stuff and E Tu union have been negotiations over pay for several weeks. Photo / File
Staff at media organisation Stuff will go on strike after rejecting the company’s latest pay offer.
Union members overwhelmingly voted for industrial action in a secret ballot which concluded today, the Herald understands.
Details of the strike are yet to be determined, but previous proposals included two-hour strikes which would escalate to 24-hour strikes if talks over pay were not resolved.
Stuff’s stable of mastheads includes its namesake news website, The Dominion Post, The Press, and Sunday Star-Times. It also publishes several regional and community newspapers, including The Manawatu Standard, The Nelson Mail, Taranaki Daily News and Waikato Times.
Stuff and E tū Union have been in negotiations for several weeks. The sticking points have been over pay rises and the structure that determines how future pay rises are decided.
Members were seeking an increase in line with inflation, which is at a 32-year high of 7.3 per cent.
The company’s latest offer was understood to be a 5.5 per cent pay rise and higher earners were offered a 3.5 per cent pay rise. The company had also offered to introduce a new pay scale for union journalists.
That offer was overwhelmingly rejected by Stuff’s 150 union members in a vote last week. They then proceeded to a further ballot on industrial action, which was concluded today.
Stuff’s chief content officer Joanna Norris said the company had not yet been provided with the outcome of the ballot, but said it was understood that members planned to begin rolling strike action today.
She said the company believed the salary increase it had tabled was in line with offers accepted by journalists at other media organisations, and was made up of an overall increase and a new stepped pay scale.
It is understood that this offer would, on average, increase pay by 7 per cent.
“Our aim is always to negotiate constructively and we have strong interest in continuing to provide fair pay and conditions for all staff, including those who belong to E tū,” Norris said.
A strike would affect less than half of Stuff’s journalists, but it would be “challenging” for the company’s operations, she said.
Like all businesses, Stuff was facing rising costs and pressures of inflation, and needed to balance its desire to pay staff as much as it could with these pressures.
“For example, all publishers are grappling with a 30 per cent increase in the price of newsprint,” Norris said.
She added: “We look forward to getting back to the negotiating table.”
Newsroom strikes in New Zealand are relatively rare. TVNZ took industrial action in 2006, and NZ Herald and New Zealand Press Association staff went on strike in 2001.
Members told the Herald that Stuff’s latest offer was “insulting” and “feels like a slap in the face”.
Another said the company appeared to be hiring a large number of management and executive roles but was refusing to give its journalists a cost of living increase.
“Stuff claims to stick up for hardworking Kiwis but won’t support its own staff, who are really struggling,” another member said.
“No one wants to strike but hopefully the threat of strike action will make managers take notice and take our claims seriously.”
Aside from pay, the other area of contention in the Stuff negotiations involved the union’s call for a step pay scale that dictates how much staff salaries should increase on a yearly basis.
This would mark a significant structural change to the way increases are currently determined.
Under a step pay scale system, annual salary increases are pre-set and determined by increments based on years of service.
After the Herald published details of the negotiations earlier this month, editorial staff were asked not to leak sensitive information to media.
In an email titled “a note about how to leak well, or not at all”, Norris described the leaking of details about the company’s pay talks with E Tū as a “fly in the ointment” to progressing the “good faith” talks with the union.
Norris told editorial staff planning to leak information to first discuss it with a trusted colleague or manager.
“There may be impacts of leaking things externally that you haven’t considered,” her email said.
“If you think the info is newsworthy, leak it to a colleague. It must be frustrating for our own journos to be beaten on stories. Back your own news judgement and the professionalism of our journos.”
*This article originally said Stuff had 200 union members. The actual number is 150 union members.