Staff to meet Irish Daily Star Sunday management about redundancy terms

JOURNALISTS at the Irish Daily Star Sunday will meet management today to discuss redundancy terms after the shock announcement that the newspaper is to close.

The last edition will appear this Sunday after the decision was made to axe the title to curb growing losses.

Staff were only told of the closure when they were summoned to a meeting yesterday morning and were stunned at the announcement as they had taken over new offices just weeks earlier.

National Union of Journalists (NUJ) Irish organiser Nicola Coleman said the union was surprised and disappointed by the decision. “It has come as a bolt out of the blue and there has been no prior consultation,” she said.

Managing director Paul Cooke defended the manner of informing the 17 workers that their jobs were gone.

“There is no good time to do this,” he said.

The Sunday newspaper, stable mate to the Irish Daily Star, was established in 2003 and reached sales of almost 65,000 within a few years, although that had fallen to 54,000 by the middle of last year.

Mr Cooke said the Sunday newspaper market was the most competitive, with 18 titles jostling for business, and the Irish Daily Star Sunday had not made a profit since it was launched, losing over €1 million last year with greater losses forecast for 2011.

“It’s the economy and the slump in advertising. We can’t see that recovering any time soon and we cannot sustain the continuing losses,” he said.

Ms Coleman said she would be seeking talks with management. “This employer has in the past refused to negotiate with trade unions but we hope that the rights of workers facing redundancy to be represented collectively will be respected,” she said.

She said the union would make a case for redeploying the workers to the Irish Daily Star but Mr Cooke said this was unlikely to happen unless job vacancies arose there.

He would not comment on the redundancy terms, saying it would be discussed with staff at today’s meeting.

He said the decision to close had nothing to do with recent libel actions and a hefty fine for contempt of court that arose from the paper’s reporting on criminal figures.

“That might have put you into losses for one year — the losses we are talking about are ongoing every year.”

Mr Cooke said the Sunday newspaper’s performance did not affect its sister daily title.

“The Irish Daily Star is one of the few media organisations around making a profit. It’s rock solid,” he said.