'The axis has shifted': Scenes from Nine HQ as historic strike begins
Journalists from The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and the Australian Financial Review have walked off the job in numbers for the first time since 2017, when they were still owned by Fairfax Media.
As Nine Entertainment chief executive Mike Sneesby counts down the hours to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris, several dozen journalists from the company's newspapers division downed tools and filed out of the company's headquarters in North Sydney at 11am on Friday.
They were greeted with cheers from unionists and assembled media, as the first strike for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review (and The Age in Melbourne) in seven years, and the first since the former Fairfax Media merged with Nine in 2018, officially kicked off.
Months of frustration that had built up in newsrooms over stalled pay talks, job cuts and broader public relations crises at the company had literally spilled on to the street. And it was clear who staff were angry at: Sneesby and the company's managing director of publishing, Tory Maguire.
“I’ve got to say, Nine did not take us seriously, it had to be one of the most constructive, insightful bargaining committees I’ve seen, and we were constantly advising her — Tory, publishing — that this offer was not going to stack up,” David Marin-Guzman, a reporter at the AFR and member of Nine Publishing's house committee said on Friday.
