INDUSTRIAL ACTION AT the Connaught Telegraph newspaper has been suspended pending the outcome of talks between the UNITE trade union, management at the paper and the regional Newspaper Printers Association.
Workers at the newspaper threatened to strike after being told last Friday of plans to cut pre-press positions – such as sub-editing, typesetting and design – and outsource them to another facility in Mullingar, Co Westmeath. The cuts would affect seven people working at the facility, who between them have more than 200 years experience.
In a statement, UNITE said that the employees involved had already “reduced their working week to three days and their take home pay by a significant amount to ensure survival of the paper”.
UNITE said it is seeking to replicate agreements reached last year with publishers of the Mayo News, when local jobs were saved in similar circumstances: staff agreed to a restructuring of the way they worked, resulting in the maintaining of a number of the jobs at that newspaper in Westport.
Management has agreed that all work will halt in relation to the connection to the installation of fibre optic lines that would have been essential for the outsourcing to proceed.
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