Strike threat at RTÉ if job losses follow rejection of staff pay cuts

RTÉ staff have warned they will strike if compulsory redundancies are forced on them by management.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Siptu members who spoke to the Irish Mail on Sunday this week said there was a ‘militant’ and ‘resolute’ mood among the 1,800 workforce after they rejected a pay cuts package.

RTÉ’s plan to save €60m has now run aground after 87% of workers said no to the deal.

The cuts, estimated to be worth €8.3m, form part of RTÉ’s pledge to deliver cost savings over three years.

There is now speculation that management may attempt to refer the matter to an internal tribunal – but staff are adamant that any proposed wage cuts will be rejected again, as will compulsory redundancies.

A camera operator and Siptu member at RTÉ said the deal had been rejected because it was ‘unfair’.

‘You’re asking people on €40,000 to take a 3.5% pay cut and people on €200,000 to take just over 5%. How is that fair? It’s not, it’s unfair. If pay cuts need to be made, they should come from the top.

‘There’s a militant atmosphere now. Nobody wants to strike but we will if they force redundancies.’

An NUJ member who works in a senior role at the station said most journalists’ workloads had ‘increased by a big margin’ since the pandemic.

‘To ask us to take a pay cut in this environment is just wrong,’ she told the MoS. ‘There’s quite a divide opening up between people at the top and the people keeping the place running everyday. There’s a resolute mood.’

However, another Siptu worker said there was cautious ‘optimism’ as management had not made any announcement on compulsory redundancies.

‘We haven’t heard a whisper from them. But if they tried it, it would be vigorously opposed. There would be a strike.’

A Siptu official at the station also admitted there was now ‘a huge gulf’ between workers and management. However, he denied unions at RTÉ had got it wrong by bringing the deal to their members in the first place.

The cost-saving package was brought to the workforce by management and the RTÉ trade union group (TUG) including Siptu and the NUJ in early February and voted on seven weeks later.

Siptu’s Graham Macken said it has ‘never been a union deal’.

He said: ‘Management brought this deal and it has been rejected by a huge majority. RTÉ has to consider its position now but one thing is for certain, there will be no pay cuts. They are off the table.’

RTÉ journalist and NUJ representative Paul Murphy told the MoS the union is not under any illusion about the mood of members.

‘The NUJ had two staff reps on the Trade Union Group negotiating team, Emma O’Kelly and I. Before the ballot, we wrote jointly to NUJ members explaining why we opposed the proposals. No union involved in the talks recommended the proposals, they were presented to members for ballot as the best that RTÉ management would agree to,’ he said.

‘The fact that the proposals were rejected comprehensively shouldn’t have, and wouldn’t have, come as a surprise to most in RTÉ. Our members, who have been working hard like others in the media throughout the pandemic, have not had a costof-living pay rise in over a decade.

‘We voted for a pay cut in 2009 that wasn’t restored until 2017. The arguments in favour of voting for another pay cut in 2021 were not persuasive and NUJ members obviously didn’t find them persuasive, given that 90.5% of those who voted rejected them.’

Speaking to RTÉ Radio before the ballot, director general Dee

Forbes said the station would probably ‘end up at the industrial relations tribunal’ if the cuts package was rejected.

A spokesperson for Ms Forbes declined to say this week when or if this would now happen.

However, a Siptu source said: ‘Anything management thought before the ballot now has to be rethought.’

RTÉ said it had no comment this weekend beyond the statement issued last week, which expressed disappointment with the outcome of the ballot and that further engagement will take place.

But the Siptu rep told the MoS: ‘We are waiting.’

The last time RTÉ staff went on strike was in 1992.

‘Members have not had a pay rise in a decade’