Tamedia wants to persuade employees to leave with money

As the portal Watson reported on Wednesday evening reportsTamedia is currently in talks with 10 to 15 employees from the production department "Tamedia Editorial Services" - including layout, proofreading and picture editing. Not only about "internal transfers to new functions", but also about "termination agreements with a financial contribution". In other words, about severance payments.

Tamedia spokesman Christoph Zimmer not only confirms this procedure to Watson, but also states that similar offers in the editorial offices of Tamedia newspapers "cannot be ruled out in individual cases".

Anyone who accepts the offer receives an individually fixed amount of money and is released immediately - i.e. without a notice period.

The background: Tamedia has too many employees for the reorganization plans communicated last year. The supra-regional content in western and German-speaking Switzerland will be standardized by Mantel. A central Tamedia editorial office provides content to twelve daily and weekly newspapers in German-speaking Switzerland.

Terminations possible

It is obvious that this model requires fewer staff. It is also clear that Tamedia would prefer to let the surplus staff go in the interests of both parties. Group CEO Christoph Tonini originally assured that the reorganization would not involve any redundancies. However, the goal of achieving the required reduction in personnel through staff turnover was revised by Tonini in March 2018: If there were no more natural departures in the next three years, redundancies could no longer be ruled out.

This fluctuation is now apparently to be helped with money. Tamedia is thus underlining its goal of completing the restructuring with as few redundancies as possible. However, spokesperson Zimmer has already warned Watson: The company is not assuming that this alone will be enough - redundancies can therefore not be ruled out in the production department. Not even in the editorial department. At least, according to Zimmer, Tamedia is not assuming that there will be a large number of redundancies there. (hae)