I have two specific meetings next week to discuss new technology and the alleged efficiencies it brings. One is with a company who introduced the "super-duper" "all-singing, all-dancing" system that was supposed to reduce the need for sub-editors and help produce papers in a fast-track way.
I don't like saying this over and over again, but we did warn them that it wouldn't quite be like that.
It is a bit of a shambles and along with ill-thought through restructuring changes, introduced before the system bedded in, then you can imagine things are not too good and staff are completely pissed off and demoralised.
At my second meeting I will try and relay this information in an effort to help avoid similar events and hopefully that message will be taken on board and all the mistakes made elsewhere won't be repeated.
If they are repeated then we will see less staff trying to cope with flawed production systems and the ensuing reduction in quality of the papers and sky high stress levels among NUJ members in particular. It is astonishing that so many newspaper publishers can make the same mistakes along the way to introducing new technology.
They believe what the software salespeople tell them, they ignore the union advice, they make redundancies and cut casual shifts and they do not provide sufficient cover for training or in some cases inadequate training. They then struggle to meet deadlines and maintain quality and wonder why the efficiencies are making things extremely inefficient.
Thursday 8 April 2010
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