Britain’s Reuters journalists to strike over pay dispute

PanARMENIAN.Net - Britain-based journalists at the Reuters news agency have voted to strike for the first time in more than 25 years in a dispute over pay, their union and the company said, according to AP.

The National Union of Journalists said its members voted to walk off the job for 48 hours starting at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. The union said it has 159 members at the company, about a third of Reuters' 433 editorial employees in Britain.

The union said 83 percent of its members at Reuters voted for the walkout, rejecting management's offer of a 1.75 percent pay increase. Britain's inflation rate is currently above 4 percent.

Union representatives Mike Roddy and Helen Long blamed management for the strike.

"The company ignored repeated warnings that members had reached a tipping point, after years of below-inflation pay rises, combined with rising costs, that are pricing many members out of their job," they said in a statement.

Stephen Adler, editor-in-chief of Reuters News, said the company regretted the strike and had "put in place contingency plans to ensure that Reuters continues to deliver the quality journalism that our customers rely on during this period."

"We respect the right of our colleagues to engage in this job action as part of the bargaining process and look forward to welcoming them back to work on their next work day," he said. Parent company Thomson Reuters Corp. is due to release its full-year earnings on Thursday.

Thomson Reuters Corp. was formed when Thomson Corp. bought London-based Reuters in 2008 to form one of the world's largest news and information companies. The company is based in New York.