NZZ regional media relocate proofreading to Bosnia-Herzegovina
Because the NZZ regional media have to save money, they are moving their proofreading abroad. In future, newspaper articles will be proofread in Bosnia-Herzegovina instead of St. Gallen or Lucerne.
Pascal Hollenstein, journalistic director of NZZ Regionalmedien, which includes the St. Galler Tagblatt and the Lucerne Newspaper justified the outsourcing of the proofreading departments of the two newspapers with the pressure to save money. He regretted this step. He was faced with the choice of moving the proofreading department abroad or doing without it altogether.
The proofreading work will be outsourced to a German company, said Hollenstein in an interview. In future, young women in Banja Luka will check the articles for errors. The employees are former refugees who found refuge in German-speaking countries during the war in Yugoslavia. Many of them had studied German language and literature, Hollenstein continued. The proofreaders would now be systematically prepared for the linguistic peculiarities common in Switzerland, so-called Helvetisms.
The NZZ Group had already announced on Tuesday that proofreading work would be outsourced. announcedwhen it announced that the Ostschweiz am Sonntag will only be published as an e-paper from November. Five employees from the publishing services and printing departments will be made redundant and four others will be offered early retirement.
The Syndicom union threatened on Friday morningto make representations to the NZZ Group if this provider does not carry out the proofreading work under collective labor agreement conditions. "Such wage dumping would not suit the NZZ Group, which has so far sold quality as a characteristic", Syndicom wrote. (SDA)
