Restructuring at the international news agency Reuters has sparked objections by journalists that quality could suffer, but management has said that talk of big job cuts is inaccurate.
Reuters staff are alarmed by a relocation programme that underpins a major cost-cutting drive by the group.
The agency’s Paris newsroom went on strike for several hours on Monday and Tuesday in protest at management plans to cut one job as part of a programme aimed at eliminating 3 000 posts agency wide, union sources said.
The newsroom in London has also voted by 84% in favour of a strike, in response to fears of new job cuts, even though it has not yet formally given a strike notice, they added.
Reuters, which earns 90% of its revenue from feeding financial services to banks and markets, is now facing fierce competition from the US financial agency Bloomberg and Canada’s Thomson Financial.
The British-based agency embarked on a drastic restructuring programme in February 2003, after posting the biggest loss in its history.
Under a three-year plan dubbed ”Fast Forward”, Reuters is to slash one fifth of its workforce — from 16 000 to 13 000 — by the end of 2005, while striving to maintain the quality of its flagship news agency.
The agency has already shed 1 300 jobs, but another 1 700 cuts remain to be found. Journalists have so far been largely spared, as only 200 of the agency’s 2 500 editorial staff have been axed, mainly through cuts at management level and by not replacing people when they retire.
Journalists now fear they are going to lose jobs under a relocation plan that is shifting jobs to processing centres in
Bangalore, India, Singapore and Canada.
On October 7, Reuters editor-in-chief Geert Linnebank told a news conference in Bangalore that 340 staff had been recruited there since operations began in April.
”By the end of next year our centre in Bangalore will employ 1 200 people. Of this, 750 will be employed in the data management centre and the rest in other functions,” Linnebank said.
Management denies, however, that up to 250 journalists’ jobs elsewhere are at stake.
”There are a lot of stories and claims going around about Reuters making further cuts. There have been suggestions that something like £22-million of cuts are going to be made and up to 250 journalists are going to lose their job. That’s simply not true,” a spokesperson for the company said in London.
She said the changes would be implemented by mid-2005 and lead to the loss of at most 10 jobs.
She added that about 20 jobs would be lost in the London newsroom since some news would be treated by the centre in Bangalore.
Three pictures desks in London, Washington and Singapore, which currently work in relay to provide round-the-clock coverage, would be replaced by a single structure in Singapore.
Although smaller teams will remain in place in London and Washington, these will only deal with coverage of local events, while three posts of picture editor are to be created in France, Germany and the Middle East.
The graphics service in Miami, Florida, will be merged with that in Singapore, while ”one or two” posts would also be shed on the London sports desk.
The multi-media desk will be transferred to Toronto in Canada, with the loss of several jobs in London, while two posts tasked with drawing up agendas will be handled by Bangalore.
Unions, however, are not convinced that the job losses will be so light.
”Such measures will irreparably damage the company’s reputation for editorial accuracy and integrity,” the National Union of Journalists said. ”The Reuters brand depends on the quality of its journalism.”
”It is time that the agency listened to its staff and halted the drive to cut costs at the expense of quality,” concurred National Union of Journalists ational Organiser for Newspapers and Agencies, Barry Fitzpatrick.- Sapa-AFP