Mecom's Dutch redundancies: 'stop killing Limburg's word'

Dutch journalists threatened industrial action after 78 job-cost, of which 15 were editorial, were announced in the Dutch part of Mecom this week.

The redundancies in Media Groep Limburg (MGL) came due to "synergy effects" with the Mecom's other recent acquisition in Holland, Dutch newspaper group, Wegener, and MGL's main title switching to tabloid format. Pieter Janssen was the first blogger I saw blogging about the affair.

I was too busy chasing this and other stories as a journalist to blog it there and then, but here's a few tidbits from the story I wrote (in Norwegian). News of the redundancies were met with shock and disbelief because MGL has been through 4 – 5 reorganisations during the last 4 -5 years.

A spokesman for the spontaneous action committee formed by the journalists in Limburg, Jan Cuypers, said they would appeal to all Dutch journalists and to the people of Limburg to stand up against the redundancies, and unite under the banner "Stop Killing Limburg's Word" (my translation). However, Cuypers doubted Mecom-boss David Montgomery was behind the plan, and thought MGL's boss Johan Boermann was a more likely culprit.

"We can't make a newspaper for this region with fewer journalists. Fewer journalists means diminished quality, which again means less subscribers. We want to show people what will happen if we are forced to make a newspaper from Apeldoorn, he said (Apeldoorn is Wegener's headquarter in Holland and is situated outside of the Limburg region. Limburg is the lovely province where Maastricht is the capital, an area renown for the inhabitant's Souther tilt and hospitable and jovial character).

The Dutch Journalist Union said, with this being Montgomery's first move after the Wegener acquisition, they feared this was the first sign of what they could expect in Wegener, and pledged to appeal to MGL's leaders on behalf of all the people made redundant, also those from the IT- human resources- and administrative staff.