Back to the future

JOURNALISTS at the Sheffield Star are being balloted on industrial action. Does this affect us?

Nine months ago Johnston Press, which owns the Star and a whole host of titles across the North-East and North Yorkshire, set up a centralised subbing hub in Sheffield. This was resisted by journalists and the NUJ, who claimed – rightly – that centralised subbing would not work and would undermine newspaper quality.

Johnston went ahead, handing out P45s and ruining the lives of many loyal staff members in the process.

Nine months down the line, Johnston has announced that its hub isn’t working. Now more redundancies are looming while the company railroads through another untested system, wrecking even more lives.

Could this sorry state of affairs be repeated at a company near you? You bet it could.

For a full report, see Hold the Front Page.