Journalists at news publisher Reach have accepted a 2% pay rise backdated to 1 April, along with other concessions.
Reach employs 2,587 production and editorial, 680 sales and commercial, and 312 administration employees.
Members of the Reach National Union of Journalists (NUJ) Group Chapel voted to accept the 2% pay increase offer, along with several concessions. These include the right to decent additional payments for bank holiday working, a correction to underfunding of photographic and videographic roles, an important adjustment made to the content editors’ pay, and progress on the Career Development Framework (CDF), which provides standardised pay scales.
In the current partial CDF rollout, around 70% of those participating achieved salary increases of between £1,400 and £4,500.
Chris Morley, national coordinator at Reach NUJ Group Chapel, said: “The positive strides in digital revenue have come about on the back of the organisation’s journalists, who were asked to significantly boost their productivity. They met that challenge and put it back on track, that now needs to be recognised through a decent and fair annual pay settlement.
“While chief executive Jim Mullen says he is ‘very grateful’ for his employees’ efforts, that does not pay the bills for our members. He and the board need to be prepared to recognise the huge efforts being made by their journalists. To offer a sub-inflation pay cut is not going to cut the mustard.”
Reach stated that it had no additional comment to make.
