Journalists at some of Australia’s biggest newspapers have gone on strike ahead of the Paris Olympics after management rejected their demands for higher wages.
Editorial teams at Nine Entertainment, which owns the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Australian Financial Review, Brisbane Times, and WAtoday, stopped work at 11 am on Friday, hours before the opening ceremony of the Games of the 33rd Olympiad.
In Melbourne, journalists picketed outside The Age newspaper while wearing T-shirts and waving placards emblazoned with the slogan: “Don’t torch journalism.”
The walkout comes after staff voted to reject annual pay increases of between 3 and 4 percent over the next three years on the basis that the offer did not keep pace with rising living costs.
“We want a pay rise in line with CPI, a commitment to workplace diversity, safeguards around AI, and a fair deal for freelancers,” the Media, Entertainment, and Arts Alliance said in a post on X.
Nine Entertainment, which also owns Nine Network television and Nine Radio, is the official broadcaster of the games and has sent about 200 staff to Paris to cover the competition.
Like other countries, Australia has seen its media landscape devastated by successive rounds of job cuts in recent years amid plunging advertising revenues.
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