Anandabazar Patrika group to sack 40% of its staff : Indian media
Popular Indian Bengali news outlet Anandabazar Patrika will downsize 40 per cent of its employees, an Indian media organisation reported. The media organisation, the Quint said that the decision will be implemented soon.
Here is the full report.
Even as the Narendra Modi government’s demonetisation move has begun to bite Indians hard, the ABP Group, which publishes two of eastern India’s most popular newspapers – the Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika and the English newspaper The Telegraph – is all set to retrench jobs of both journalists and non-journalists.
The downsizing of its workforce, by as much as 40 percent, will begin with immediate effect. The information related to this imminent job cut has been conveyed to employees informally.
The notice informs that the journalists, whose services would no longer be required, would continue to get an amount equivalent to the basic pay at the present rate till the time of his or her retirement would have been due. The notice made it clear that all journalists who are under the wage board will have to accept the company`s offer and will have to complete the formalities by 15 January 2017.
Repeated phone calls to the secretary to ABP Group Associate Vice-President (Human Resource) Shiuli Biswas elicited no response. There was no response too to The Quint’s questionnaire emailed to Biswas 30 hours before the story was published.
Large Downsizing
Though the company has not officially declared the number of employees who would be offered the `golden handshake`, there are indications that the number would be high.
The move comes a few months after Aveek Sarkar, stepped down as editor-in-chief of the group’s two main publications, Anandabazar Patrika and The Telegraph, leaving his elder brother Arup Sarkar at the helm of affairs as chief editor. Arup Sarkar’s son Atideb was made executive director of ABP Group.
American Consultant
Anandabazar Patrika and The Telegraph journalists privately say that the retrenchment would hit journalists across the line – those under the wage board, those under the company scale and contract workers. It is learnt that sometime back, ABP Group engaged a US company, Hey Consultancy Ltd, to recommend ways to streamline the group`s various newspapers, magazines and news channels, cut down expenditure and losses etc.
After studying the group`s workings for around six months, Hey Consultancy recently submitted its recommendations to the ABP management. According to a number of ABP journalists, the information that percolated down to them from the corporate office is that the Hey report observed that the group has at least 47.5 percent surplus workers.
40-50% Employees to be Sacked
The impression that gained currency was that some 40-50 percent employees would be sacked. This was further strengthened as heads of various departments have already been verbally instructed by the ABP management to prepare a list of 50 percent of the employees whose jobs could be dispensed with.
It is not clear how many of them would be asked to go, but a pall of gloom has descended on journalists and non-journalists alike.
One senior journalist said, “It will be difficult to absorb such a large number of media persons in the industry. The problem will be more acute in West Bengal, where both the print and TV journalism are suffering from stagnancy for quite some time.”
From Wage Board to Company Scale
Following the trend set by other media houses, ABP has been systematically bringing the journalists who were enjoying wage board-stipulated payscales to company scales.
Now, more than 90 percent of the senior and middle-rung journalists working there come under the company scale. Besides, a good number of journalists (including all correspondents stationed in various districts) are on contract. Their contract is renewable annually or biennially.
Source: The Quint
