Staff members at embattled media company Nine Entertainment have passed a motion of no confidence in the outlet’s chief executive Mike Sneesby and its board after Mr Sneesby announced 200 job cuts on Friday.
Mr Sneesby announced the job cuts to staff on Friday morning as part of a $30 million cost-cutting plan for the business that will eliminate 5 per cent of the company’s total work force, mostly from its metro newspapers and the Nine TV network.
The company attributed the job cuts to the termination of a multi-million dollar commercial deal with Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, as well as a sluggish advertising market.
Staff members within Nine Publishing, which runs The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, WAToday and the Brisbane Times, met with the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) to air their frustrations about the sackings.
Within the 200 firings, upwards of 90 are in publishing which is disproportionately high considering the division’s “strong financial performance,” the Nine MEAA members said.
“We demand an explanation from the company about why the publishing division appears to have been disproportionately targeted for job losses, given the recent strong financial performance by the mastheads in a particularly difficult time for all print outlets, and given the fact that the Meta money was spent across the company, rather than just on the mastheads,” a statement from the union members read.
The note continued to outline the staffers’ “dismay” that many senior editors were kept unaware of the job cuts “despite the end of Meta funding being known for months”.
“As a result, staff across The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, WAtoday and the Brisbane Times have today unanimously passed a motion of no confidence in Nine chief executive Mike Sneesby and the Nine Entertainment Company board,” the unionists said.
Alongside about 90 staffers from the newspapers, 38 employees from the news and current affairs team, which encompasses flagship programs like 60 Minutes and 9News, will be axed.
The job cuts also fall mere months after former news boss Darren Wick left Nine following a complaint by a female employee relating to inappropriate conduct.
The claims against Mr Wick opened a Pandora’s box of alleged inappropriate workplace behaviour in the Nine news room as part of an “entrenched” culture of harassment.
Meanwhile, former Nine chairman Peter Costello stepped down from the top job earlier this month after an alleged altercation with a journalist from The Australian at Canberra Airport which was recorded on a mobile device.
Nine’s latest woes follow similar cost cutting measures at rival publisher Seven West Media.
Earlier this week, Seven sacked its entire executive team, leaving just Chairman Kerry Stokes and chief executive Jeff Howard as the boardroom’s “sole survivors”.