South London Newsquest staff vote unanimously for strike ballot

Members of the National Union of Journalists at Newsquest South London have voted unanimously to ballot for strike action following claims further redundancies are being carried out at titles in the area.

Staff at newspapers in the area, which covers Surrey, Sutton and Twickenham, have been working to rule since 15 April.

Earlier this week members of the NUJ in the region made a unanimous vote of no confidence in London managing director Roger Mills and south London advertising director Dene Stuart, following an announcement of further editorial redundancies.

The dispute is over four issues in total the union claims, the "absurd" reduction in editorial space, redundancies across all sections of editorial, a review of a two per cent pay rise and an office relocation.

The union claims its attempts to communicate and make offers to management, including working an extra hour alongside the work to rule, have gone unanswered. Now 25 members of the NUJ who attended a meeting this week have voted in favour of balloting for strike action.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk today Mother of the Chapel for NUJ Newsquest South West London, Thais Portilho-Shrimpton, said if things continue it will have "a major impact" on the local community.

"My biggest worry is that we're going to have just a few journalists filling very small newspapers with press releases because obviously they won't have time to get out there and do the important stories.

"Which means authorities will go on doing their things unaccounted ... And not just that, we do all sorts of things for our community, to highlight issues, even to show what the community's doing, it's all part of the job and unfortunately that's all going to be lost and it's going to be a real shame."

Newsquest had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.

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