Staff at the Scotsman are to ballot for industrial action over the “intolerable stress” caused by struggling to publish with skeleton levels of staff.
Johnston Press, the parent company of the Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News, has made a string of deep cuts across the titles in recent years.
Staff say that the most recent cuts in January have now pushed the remaining employees to breaking point.
“We are working with a skeleton staff,” said one employee. “The current workload is intolerable and that staffing levels are already far too low. This inevitably means increased stress and a poor quality product produced at the end of it.”
A meeting of the National Union of Journalists’ joint chapel representing the newspapers, and sister publishing unit Johnston Weeklies, earlier this week resolved to ballot for action “up to and including strike action”.
Johnston Press said it intends to implement its plan for the “newsroom of the future” across its 220-plus regional and local titles that will supposedly alleviate work pressure as jobs are cut.
“Rather than rush headlong into the introduction of a system that has not worked efficiently at any other similar Johnston Press centre we want the company to look first at the current woeful staffing situation which is causing intolerable stress to be put on all staff,” said the employee.
The Scotsman has faced a string of cuts with a third of the remaining production staff going in January, 45 editorial jobs going in 2014 and 30 cut in 2013.
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