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Unions report from meeting with Reuters CEO Tom Glocer

The following is a joint statement of the National Union of Journalists, Unite (Amicus Section), the Newspaper Guild of New York and the Canadian Media Guild, after a meeting with Reuters CEO Tom Glocer, Executive Editor David Schlesinger and Mark Sandham, global head of HR operations:

Members of the National Union of Journalists, Unite (Amicus Section) and The Newspaper Guild held an unprecedented meeting on Monday with Reuters CEO Tom Glocer and other senior managers ( to express concerns about the impending merger between Thomson and Reuters. Here, in summary form, are some of the key points raised in the meeting, and management responses:

* The union group represented by Alan Burn of Unite, Peter Szekely of the U.S. Newspaper Guild and Mike Roddy and Myra MacDonald of the National Union of Journalists presented the executives with the results of a new survey showing that while just under half of NUJ members said the merger would be good for Reuters, at least as many said it would be bad for them individually and a majority said it would be bad for editorial.

* Union representatives said they would need a more detailed projection of the impact the merger would have on their members’ employment security than either of the two companies have anounced so far. They also said they did not want the combination of the two companies to be used as an excuse to erect artificial corporate boundaries that would keep employees doing union-represented work outside of union coverage.

* Glocer, who recently announced a “Joint Steering Group” of Thomson and Reuters executives to plan the integration of the two companies, said he has seen no hard numbers on how many jobs will be lost from the merger. But he said much of the projected $500 million in synergies would be from “non-people” savings like property costs and that most of the cuts would be of upper and middle level management jobs. But he said he would be surprised if combining the editorial operations of Reuters and Thomson did not result in some job losses.

* Glocer said the merger was good for Reuters since it provided a major injection of capital that should allow the company to grow and compete in the future. The merger should provide insurance to Reuters to cushion it from any future big shock in the financial services industry.

* Glocer said editorial would increase in size as a result of the merger, and could be transformed in other ways as well, which have yet to be defined. He said a New York Times report that Reuters might review its commitment to entertainment and human interest news might have been misconstrued. “I didn’t mean to imply we could get out of areas of general news. David (Schlesinger) needs to decide what news comes from Reuters.” This could involve sourcing some news from third parties. He said it would be up to Schlesinger to decide.

* Union representatives said the Trustees’ interpretation of the Reuters Trust Principles in approving the merger highlighted the need for an editorial ombudsman or internal advocate for editorial, or some other way of providing a credible layer of protection on editorial integrity issues.

* Glocer said that under the terms of the merger, the Trust Principles, rather than being abrogated, had instead been accepted by the Thomson family’s Woodbridge entity, which holds the majority of Thomson shares, as a basic tenet of the deal. He said this was a guarantee of editorial integrity, as was the continuation of the Trustees.

* The representatives of the unions, who have been neutral about the merger since it was announced, hope to have an ongoing dialogue about merger-related matters with senior-level managers.

For more information, contact Kathy Viner ([email protected]) at 416-591-5333 or 1-800-465-4149.

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