Newsquest has awarded its staff who crossed picket lines at the Southern Daily Echo with a bonus of two days pay.
The newspaper’s editor-in-chief Ian Murray informed non-union journalists they would receive an additional day’s pay for working during each of the two recent 48-hour strikes.
The two-day strike, which is in regard to a dispute over the newspaper’s on-going two-year wage freeze, involved 40 members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).
Murray said: “Staff who worked during the two periods of industrial action carried out extra duties and covered extra hours and this has been recognised. As such not everyone received the same payment.
“In my letter to those staff explaining the extra payments, I recognised no one continued to work through the strike action in order to achieve personal gain and fully understood they may wish to donate their extra payments to charity. That is their choice.”
The NUJ called for the payments to be offered to all staff.
Murray added: "I am surprised the NUJ would not wish for journalists to be recompensed for their efforts. To suggest that staff not in work should receive part of the payments due to those who did carry out extra duties is patently absurd."
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