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Fairfax staff vote to end strike over job cuts

Employees of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald have voted to go back to work after walking off the job on Wednesday following the announcement of job cuts.

Fairfax announced it will cut 80 jobs from the photography, editorial and Life magazine divisions in Melbourne and Sydney.

Thirty-five editorial jobs were on the line, 30 photographers would lose their jobs and 15 positions would be lost from the Life magazine division.

Staff voted to return to work after a 24-hour strike, on the basis that they will be able to meet with management before Friday morning.

If management does not agree to this request, staff say they will hold another stop-work meeting on Friday.

Journalist Richard Baker says workers want Fairfax to extend the one week consultation phase about redundancies to three weeks.

He says staff also want the chance to discuss alternative cost-cutting measures that do not involve sacking editorial staff.

“We’re only talking about $5 million out of a $2.6 billion company,” he said.

“This isn’t make or break for the company and I think they bought themselves $5 million worth of bad publicity for the way this has been handled.”

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