Better social plan demanded by Tamedia workforce
On May 9, Tamedia announced that "full journalistic competition" would be restored between Tages-Anzeiger and the Zurich regional newspapers. The staffs of Tages-Anzeiger and Tamedia's regional newspapers Zürichsee-Zeitung and Zürcher Unterländer are now demanding a better social plan for the ten people who will be laid off in connection with the abandonment of the TA's regional split strategy.
The layoffs are related to Tamedia's announcement last week that it will reverse its split strategy and end cooperation between the editorial teams of TA and the regional newspapers. This will result in the dismissal of six employees of ZU and ZSZ as well as four members of the TA regional editorial team. At editorial meetings on May 10 and 11, to which the Syndicom union and the Impressum professional association were also invited, the staff decided to stand up for a better social plan.
In a petition to company management, the affected editorial staff are demanding a decent social plan, negotiated with the social partners and starting at least from the level of the contract negotiated in 2009, according to a statement from Syndicom and Imprint. The petition was submitted by mail on Wednesday with a good 80 signatures. Syndicom and Impressum support the actions of the editorial staff and expect that they will be called to the negotiating table by the management. Both the severance payments and the offers of early retirement are lower than those negotiated in the 2009 social plan.
