The Coordination of the Cdr met at the headquarters of the Veneto Journalists Union in Mestre. During the meeting, problems emerged that were common to all the editorial staff: first of all, workloads that were no longer sustainable, exacerbated by the increasingly pressing needs of online information.
And, in cascade: insufficient staff, lack of training, inadequacy of technological instrumentation, lack of involvement of the editorial staff in editorial strategies imposed from above without any comparison.
A situation that led to an explosion of time commitment and conditions of severe stress that were harmful to the psychophysical well-being of colleagues.
In fact, the editorial teams find themselves compensating with good will and a spirit of responsibility for the managerial incompetence of the journalistic and corporate top management: paper/web integration is now an empty refrain. The organization of work is still that of the nineties and every day it shows more and more progress with respect to the changed reality of the sector which is suffering from the advent of digital and social media: journalists are asked to do everything (photos, videos, launches web, fb, x, instagram, tik-tok, events).
For some time the cdr have asked to plan an organization of shift work in such a way as to make performance more efficient and limit the use of overtime, together with specific training programs to ensure that new technologies can be handled without being self-taught and without become “IT technicians”, making it a tool that facilitates the work and not that complicates it, even degrading professionalism.
The companies have responded to the requests of the editorial staff in two ways: by abusing the institution of flat rates which often cover not only overtime with completely insufficient figures (the practice now fluctuates between 10 and 12 hours a day or more) but at night, holidays, super holidays and Sundays; by not paying overtime to those who do not have the flat rate with the complicity of managers who either do not “mark” the hours or reduce them; in this regard, the Coordination of the cdr requests to send an email to the hierarchical superior when the 7 hours and 12 hours are exceeded and requesting formal authorization to continue under the overtime regime; at the same time, the CDR Coordination invites you to report any intimidation or omissions.
A state of fact that the Journalists’ Union forcefully rejects: it is necessary to bring work activity back within the scope of the national collective agreement.
For this reason, a mobilization involving all the publishing companies in the area starts at a regional level.
A necessary turning point also and above all to restore quality to the product and to protect the already highly compromised health of colleagues as demonstrated by the internal surveys of companies such as RCS and Athesis and which Casagit is now also investigating with the questionnaire distributed in collaboration with the National Order of psychologists.
The cdr will distribute to all the editorial staff a sheet useful for calculating, based on the actual overtime hours worked, nights and holidays worked, the capacity or otherwise of the agreed flat rate.
Given the above, the Coordination of the CDRs immediately engages the Regional Secretariat of the Veneto Journalists’ Union to request meetings with the managements of the individual companies in the presence of the CDRs.
Voted unanimously
Mestre-Venice 27 March 2024
