Tamedia Westschweiz editorial offices call arbitration board
In the conflict with the publishing house, the editorial staff of Tamedia Westschweiz have submitted a request for arbitration to the cantonal conciliation body of the canton of Vaud. They are hoping for concessions in terms of preserving jobs and newspaper titles.
Tamedia has taken note of the move. Since the beginning of the year, the new editorial structure with only one editorial team of 60 journalists for the World, Switzerland, Business and Sports sections has been in place in Lausanne, as the editorial teams of Tamedia Western Switzerland announced on Wednesday together with the Syndicom trade union and the impressum professional association.
This editorial team works for the three titles Le Matin Dimanche, 24 Heures and Tribune de Genève. Tamedia also closed the editorial offices of the titles 20 Minutes and Le Matin together. The open future of these titles is a cause for concern and creates a damaging working climate, Tamedia editors noted.
Requests for information, consultation and negotiations since last August had gone unheard. Although the Tamedia publishing house had posted excellent results for the past year, neither further layoffs nor a disappearance of the Le Matin excluded in paper form. The editors are demanding a two-year waiver on layoffs. In addition, the issues of Le Matin and 20 Minutes be retained in paper form. The request for arbitration was submitted on Wednesday.
No guarantee
"We take note of the request," said Patrick Matthey, spokesman for Tamedia Western Switzerland, in response to an inquiry from the SDA news agency. The request for a two-year waiver of redundancies had already been made last fall, he said. A possible reorganization of the editorial offices will depend on the future development of the market situation, the spokesman said. This, he said, continues to be very difficult. "We cannot guarantee that there will be no layoffs in the next two years," Matthey said. On the other hand, the publisher is astonished by the accusation that there is no social dialogue. "On the contrary, we maintain a dialog."
The publisher's legal service is currently examining what the appeal to the conciliation body of the Canton of Vaud means for Tamedia in concrete terms and to what extent the authority for such conciliation is the right one at all. (SDA/hae)
