Imprint displays Tamedia

As a result, the editorial staff of the Tages-Anzeiger is overworked, which endangers the health of the journalists, said Impressum in a statement on Monday. In the absence of a collective bargaining agreement, the only health protection available is the labor law. This prescribes maximum working hours (45 hours for journalists) and requires employers to record working hours.

Imprint writes that it has information that Tamedia does not record the working hours at the Tages-Anzeiger and many other editorial offices and that the journalists are regularly massively overworked. If this is the case, Tamedia is in violation of the labor law. As a result, Impressum has filed a complaint against Tamedia with the Labor Inspectorate. The association expects that the work situation at the Tages-Anzeiger will be monitored and that measures will be ordered if necessary. At 10 a.m., Imprint presented the complaint to Peter Maier, head of the Labor Inspectorate of the City of Zurich. According to the statement, Peter Maier showed great interest and assured that his office would take care of the matter.

Imprint has been fighting for years against the deterioration of working conditions for journalists and has tried in recent years to revive the social partnership with publishers. There has been no collective labor agreement in German-speaking Switzerland and Ticino for ten years. A small new beginning was available in the summer of 2013: a collective agreement drawn up by Imprint and the managing director of the publishers' association with minimum requirements for journalists' working conditions. But the publishers' association did not agree to this draft contract either. The representatives of the large corporations also voted against new minimum working conditions for journalists at the publishers' meeting. Impressum therefore launched the campaign "Now it's 13!". If the publishers did not want a social partnership, journalists would still have the law, the statement said. The ad against Tamedia represents the first action of the campaign.

Tamedia takes note of advertisement

Tamedia takes note of the announced complaint, as the company writes in a statement on Monday. Tamedia offers above-average working conditions compared to the rest of the industry and is convinced that the documentation of working hours known to the Labor Inspectorate of the City of Zurich corresponds to practice in the Swiss media industry. Tamedia is currently examining whether adjustments are necessary due to the new directive issued by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs Seco, which came into force on January 1, 2014. However, the work of the editorial teams is geared to a large extent to the latest news. Both journalists and employers are therefore still dependent on flexibility and a responsible approach to work and free time when implementing weekly working hours. (pd/hae)