'Haaretz' employees call open-ended strike

Workers facing wide-scale layoffs say management ignoring their protest efforts, announce: There is no paper without journalists.

By BEN HARTMAN
'Haaretz' employees protest impending layoffs 370 (photo credit: Ben Hartman)
'Haaretz' employees protest impending layoffs 370
(photo credit: Ben Hartman)
Employees of Haaretz will go on an open-ended strike beginning Wednesday afternoon, the newspaper’s employees committee said Tuesday.
“Tomorrow, all of us, employees of all sections of the paper and the online edition, are going on strike,” the announcement said. It added that “no employee will take pictures, no worker will write articles, no one will edit, design, produce or interview until the end of the strike. Remember: there is no paper without journalists.”
The workers, who face wide-scale layoffs in the near future, said that at 4 p.m. Wednesday they will hold a meeting inside the paper’s headquarters on Schocken Street in south Tel Aviv, after which they will launch the open-ended strike.
The workers said that management continues to ignore their protest efforts, creating the need for more drastic measures.
Last Sunday night, Haaretz employees held a partial work stoppage, shutting down the paper for around two hours in what was the first such action by the paper’s employees.
Shouting “No newspaper without journalists,” employees of Haaretz and TheMarker– which is published in cooperation with Haaretz – blocked the Schocken Street headquarters and demanded answers about the size and scope of the impending layoffs.
While the employees have said they are still not sure how many will be laid off, they have been told by management that around 80 of the paper’s 400 employees will be fired in the near future.