Dear: 'Sly Bailey's pay a bloody disgrace'

NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear has described Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey's £1.68 million salary as ‘a bloody disgrace’.
Dear said on the NUJ website today: “Trinity Mirror used a 41 per cent fall in pre-tax profits as justification for sacking almost 1,700 staff last year. But now we learn that Sly Bailey  received an obscene 66 per cent salary increase, so she trousers £1.68m. It’s a bloody disgrace. Hundreds of talented, hardworking journalists were thrown onto the scrapheap by Trinity Mirror, with no idea if they would be able to find another job or even afford to keep their homes. I will never forget the anguish and pain of the hundreds of NUJ members we supported while Bailey and her team wielded the axe.
“If only Sly Bailey was just an isolated parasite. Unfortunately, she and her team are simply the latest in a long line of senior media group executives happy to engage in self-congratulatory financial backslapping at the expense of hardworking and often poorly paid staff. In fact, Trinity Mirror’s senior execs happily trousered a grand total of almost £4m last year, while Marjorie Scardino, the chief executive of Financial Times owner Pearson, took home £2.3m.

“Its as if these people are deliberately goading their staff by introducing systems, processes and pay settlements designed to squeeze more and more out of them, while waving huge wads of cash in their faces. NUJ members across all Trinity Mirror titles can be assured that we will be using their management’s rationale – that a fall in profits is no barrier to huge pay rises – in the next round of pay negotiations with Trinity Mirror management.”