Nine Newspapers’ Paris Olympics team reduced to four by strike action
Nine boss Mike Sneesby might have been all smiles as he carried the Olympic torch through the French countryside but the decimation of his Paris team by strike action could soon end that.
Nine Newspapers’ team at the Olympics has been reduced to just four people as the rest of the Paris ground crew join planned industrial action to fight for higher wages.
Just four senior staff out of an estimated team of 17 are exempt from the strikes, which were voted on by staff in Australia on Monday.
The move will leave Nine Newspapers coverage of the Paris Games extremely short just days before the Opening Ceremony is scheduled to take place down the Seine River.
A decision to strike came at the same time as Nine boss Mike Sneesby, who is also in Paris, was pictured smiling as he carried the Olympic torch outside of Paris.
Sneesby, managing director and chief executive at Nine, enjoyed a walk and then broke into a light run through an urban French town, 19 stops on the railway outside Paris.
After being handed the torch on a roundabout Sneesby was immediately popular with the excited French locals, many from a local housing estate. He crouched down to be photographed with children and one woman even snatched a quick kiss of the torch.
Sneesby then smiled broadly as he was surrounded by tight security, including a dozen motorcycles and 20 plain clothes police officers, posing as joggers when the flame was passed on.
News of the industrial action coincided with the bulk of journalists and production staff from Nine newspapers landing in Paris ahead of the Games.
The decision by Paris-based staff to join their Australian colleagues on strike could sink Sneesby’s grand plans for unified Olympics coverage across the company’s print and television arms, an embarrassing concept for an organisation that spent $305 million securing its first rights to an Olympics since the 2012 Games in London.
Unionised journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald voted to go on strike after a Monday meeting to discuss the impending action. A follow-up meeting is scheduled on Tuesday with management at Nine papers.
Journalists across Nine Publishing from The Age, The Australian Financial Review, Brisbane Times and WAtoday also met to finalise the first stages of the industrial action.
Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) acting director Michelle Rae said last week that 90 per cent of union members at Nine’s newspapers were in favour of a range of protected action, including an indefinite strike, if management did not put a serious offer on the table.
Nine journalists’ requests for a new enterprise bargaining agreement come after the company’s announcement more than 90 jobs would be cut from its mastheads.
“Members’ anger is white hot that the job cuts will fall disproportionately upon the publishing division, which is profitable and productive,” MEAA acting director Michelle Rae said.
While negotiations between Nine Publishing and the union have been underway for several months, the MEAA have said management has refused to budge on pay rise demands and improvements to the award wage progression.
Following an announcement last month that 200 jobs would be cut across Nine, MEAA members at Nine Publishing passed a resounding vote of no confidence in Sneesby.
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