Swisscom cuts the salaries of Bluewin employees
Pay cuts, an unclear strategy, questions about the company's purpose: Things are reportedly looking stormy at Swisscom's news portal.
As Schweiz am Wochenende writes in its current issue, part of Bluewin's 30-strong editorial team had their contracts terminated by mid-year. At the beginning of July, those affected will be seamlessly rehired - with new contracts that include up to 1,000 francs in lost wages per month. While the change notices will initially affect those employees who work for Bluewin via the temporary company Adecco, after a period of one year employees with a Swisscom contract will also be affected by salary cuts. All Bluewin employees are now working through the subsidiary Teleclub.
How the Switzerland at the weekend writes, the mood at the news portal is correspondingly bad. There is a climate of fear, the management is accused of a lack of communication, and people who openly resisted have already left at the end of 2018.
Actually, Bluewin wants to step on the editorial gas (Werbewoche.ch reported) and keep pace with the major online media. For this purpose, former NZZ-people. The problem is that the portal should not really be a medium. Swisscom is 51 percent owned by the federal government and is therefore a state-owned company. There is a strict media ban for them in Switzerland. The fact that Bluewin is nevertheless editorially active and has interviewed Federal Councillor Amherd on the fighter jet issue, for example, is presumably only possible because neither Swisscom's top management nor the federal government have intervened so far.
It is still unclear exactly where Swisscom wants to take its news portal. There is internal talk of a lack of strategy, the newspaper knows. Rumor has it that the telecom company wanted to pull the plug on Bluewin some time ago and sees the portal's future primarily as a content provider for its own TV activities. Bluewin has recently also been housed in Teleclub's premises.
Nevertheless, Bluewin is still a relevant player in the Swiss online landscape. However, the market shares are not getting bigger - on the contrary. One problem to contend with is the slow dwindling of Internet users who automatically arrived at the Bluewin site after dialing into the Internet. 20 years ago, this was still standard for large parts of the population, but today this is no longer the case.
