Nine’s staff strike as Paris Olympic coverage begins

Nine Entertainment Co Holdings (ASX:NEC) paid $305 million to secure the rights to the Paris Olympics and all the Olympic games that follow through to 2032.

Paris is off to a rocky start, with Australia’s beloved Matildas going down 3-0 to Germany overnight, five water polo stars being struck by Covid, and, if that’s not enough to dull the excitement, Nine’s sent reporters to Paris only to have some of its unionised editorial team go on strike. Those employees are in a fight for better pay, having rejected a latest offer.

The AFR reports today: “The five-day strike will begin from 11am AEST on Friday, when staff will walk out of their offices. It will also include a handful of the publishing employees who have flown to Paris to cover the Olympic Games.”

It’ll affect staff at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Brisbane Times, WA Today and The AFR, who voted yesterday against a new enterprise bargaining agreement. NEC’s latest offer included a 3.5 per cent pay increase in the 2025 financial year, then 4 per cent and 3 per cent in the following years that followed.

It would seem extraordinary for a journalist not to do their job should they have the privilege of representing their company at a key event like the Olympics, given the career notoriety, let alone the expense incurred by NEC to have them in Paris.

NEC share price down 35% since last August

That aside, the Olympics coverage is not the only thing that could suffer here as the company deals with “the first strike among staff at the newspapers since 2017, the year before Nine merged with what was then Fairfax Media”.

Jobs are already being cut as traditional media revenues continue to suffer as audiences turn to online options and streaming.

NEC is down 35% on market since August last year, closing at $1.40 yesterday, and, in another example, Seven West Media (ASX:SWM) has plunged more than 10 per cent over the past week – nearly three per cent was lost yesterday alone – when it closed at 16.5 cents.

So what do Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance-aligned staff want?

The AFR reports journalists are seeking CPI increase, and quotes MEAA media division action director, Michelle Rae.

“It’s totally unacceptable that the company is asking workers to make a choice between a modest pay rise and the possibility of more job cuts after already announcing up to 90 redundancies in its publishing division, which it has blamed on the end of its funding deal with Meta under the News Media Bargaining Code,” she said.

The current proposal included consultation around the use of AI, yearly surveys to measure diversity of workforce and upping parental leave from 16 to 18 weeks. The initial offer was 2.5% annually for 3 years.