The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) joined its affiliates in Germany (dju in ver.di), Poland (Society of Journalists) and Switzerland (syndicom) in calling on the German Springer Group and the Swiss publisher Ringier to abandon their plans to cut jobs at their Polish joint venture Ringier Axel Springer Polska (RASP).
According to information obtained by the dju, the company intends to reduce its workforce by almost 12%. With a workforce of 1,350 employees, this could result in around 160 redundancies, despite RASP paying out 161 million zloty (around 37.86 million euros) to its shareholders in 2024.
Against this backdrop, the planned redundancies are all the more incomprehensible, explains Peter Freitag, co-chair of the dju and member of the EFJ Labour Rights Expert Group: “If a company has enough money to meet its shareholders’ return expectations, then employees must also have a share in the value they generate and not be punished with redundancies!”.
RASP President Aleksander Kutela blames the need for cuts on big tech companies who refuse to pay for the RASP content they use, and who are responsible for the fall in RASP’s own internet traffic.
We stand in solidarity with our colleagues at RASP and the Polish trade union Inicjatywa Pracownicza (IP) in their fight against job cuts and for fair working conditions. We support the trade union’s legitimate demands to reduce the scale of layoffs and to find savings in other areas.
Source: EFJ
