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October 22, 2007

Strike action looms at Coventry Telegraph

By Press Gazette

Journalists at the Coventry Telegraph and Hinckley Times have voted ‘overwhelmingly’in favour of strike action over staff shortages.

NUJ members at the Trinity Mirror titles – which were at the centre of an aborted sale earlier this year – will meet today to discuss how to continue negotiations with the company, though 78 per cent of members voted in favour of a walk-out. In the same ballot, 96 per cent of staff voted for action short of a strike.

Chapel members have suggested 5 November as a possible day for a strike. The NUJ is staging a national day of action to coincide with the Society of Editors’ annual conference in Manchester.

NUJ northern organiser Chris Morley said: ‘This is a very powerful message that the chapel is sending to management which they will ignore at their peril. This is the most graphic example yet of NUJ member being willing to stand up for their profession.

‘They have had a belly-full of Trinity Mirror’s cuts culture and are fighting back for the sake of the newspapers they have pride in and want to succeed. They are setting a lead that many other journalists who are fed up with the way managements play fast and loose with the quality of their journalism will want to follow.”

The union said today the row has been ‘simmering for months’and that journalists are upset that staff lost through redundancy and retirement have not been replaced.

Talks in August involving Acas failed to find a solution and the chapel warned the company it needed to establish a minimum number of reporters to protect quality standards.

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The union claims the Telegraph has 11 reporters for an area with a population of more than 800,000.

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