The NUJ estimates that more than 70 posts will be cut at Trinity Mirror under plans to share more editorial content across its national and regional titles.
Barry Fitzpatrick (top), NUJ deputy general secretary, said: “We calculate that more than 70 posts will be going in this massive shake up. Others are being created in digital, but many will lose out. This will hugely undermine journalism on these titles.
"It will have a serious impact on newsrooms across the country and the working conditions of staff. It is a short-sighted strategy which will rob communities of good locally-based journalism.
“The NUJ is now studying the proposals and we will be seeking talks at a national level, as this is clearly a national strategy.”
Trinity Mirror plans a shared-content unit based in Liverpool and there will be a number of new roles at the national titles for writers and photographer/videographers, plus a number of new digital roles.
Reacting to Trinity Mirror's announcement that it proposes to cut 16 editorial jobs at Media Wales, Martin Shipton, NUJ FoC, said: "We are gravely concerned about the implications for our titles. One of the proposals is to close down our features department and create a unit based in Liverpool to produce generic features content across Trinity Mirror Regionals. This will result in a loss of Welsh content in our paper and its replacement by standardised British material.
"Trinity Mirror has been making editorial job cuts for the last 10 years, with ever more disastrous consequences for its newspapers. There are many unanswered questions about the workability of these proposals and we expect swift answers."
Trinity Mirror says 92 jobs to go will be on the group’s regional newspapers, while around half of 52 new jobs to be created will be on the national titles.
The company said in a statement: “These changes will result in a net reduction of approximately 40 editorial roles and consultation with affected staff has already begun. The company hopes to achieve any redundancies by voluntary means as well as redeploying staff, where possible, to newly-created roles under the new publishing operation.”
Neil Benson, Trinity Mirror editorial director, said: "Our newsrooms have made great progress in embracing the digital world in recent years but, essentially, our processes have remained print-led.
"This new approach is a bold, imaginative step that will enable us to become a fully-fledged, digitally-focused news operation, and brings together for the first time the best of our regional and national journalism.
"It is never easy to make these decisions when it affects our colleagues in this way but we must re-engineer the way we work if our journalism is to thrive in the future."
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