Keystone-SDA cuts jobs outside newsroom
The Keystone-SDA news agency is cutting jobs as part of the announced focus on its main business. The Executive Board will be downsized, and the discontinuation of third-party business and other adjustments in the areas of human resources, IT and infrastructure will result in the loss of a total of 8.8 full-time positions.
Keystone-SDA, like all media companies, has been undergoing a major process of change for some time, according to a statement issued on Tuesday. With an adjusted strategy, the company wants to focus even more on its core business as a national and multimedia news agency.
The company is saying goodbye to third-party business. Accordingly, the PR and corporate production areas are being discontinued. Contract photography for existing customers will remain.
The Finance department will now report directly to the CEO. As a result, the Executive Board will be reduced by one person. Human Resources (HR) will be outsourced for cost and efficiency reasons. The Infrastructure and IT units will also be affected by the reduction. A social plan is in place for the ten employees affected.
The board of directors is convinced that Keystone-SDA should remain a full-service multimedia agency, the statement said. The basic supply of news to the Swiss media is of central importance - especially in times of crisis. In addition, the measures introduced are intended to pave the way for further promotion of Keystone-SDA.
Goodwill in politics
In mid-April, the Federal Council decided to provide greater support for the news agency in the future. The federal contribution will now amount to a maximum of four million Swiss francs per year instead of the previous two million. This is linked to a clearly defined performance mandate.
In their special session at the beginning of May, the federal councils also adopted proposals for bridging aid to media in the Corona crisis. This includes temporary funds to enable the Keystone-SDA news agency to provide its basic text services free of charge to electronic media customers in the national languages of German, French and Italian.
Keystone-SDA was created in 2018 from the merger between the Swiss Dispatch Agency SDA and the picture agency Keystone. The restructuring led to the elimination of 36 of the total 150 editorial jobs. The announcement of these cuts was followed by a labor dispute in early 2018 with a strike lasting several days.
Syndicom calls for social responsibility
The media union Syndicom welcomes the focus on the journalistic core business, as it stated in a statement on Tuesday. This is right for Keystone-SDA as a news agency.
At the same time, Syndicom expects the company to fulfill its responsibility towards its employees. For a publicly funded company in particular, "restructuring" should never simply mean "downsizing".
The major publishers, as owners of the agency, are called upon to invest instead of resigning. Outsourcing services and then buying them externally would cause more costs in the long term. It is also questionable whether cutting back on infrastructure and IT would pay off. "Such short-term cost-cutting exercises only bear the hallmarks of the major publishers on Keystone-SDA's board of directors," writes Syndicom.
On the other hand, the media union considers it a "step in the right direction" that Keystone-SDA wants to apply the social plan for the people affected by the cutbacks, which was fought for by the editorial staff through a strike in 2018. (SDA)
