A FORMER senior subeditor with the Kerrymannewspaper has told an Employment Appeals Tribunal hearing she felt singled out unfairly for redundancy because of her trade union activism.
Patria Monaghan, another subeditor and a news editor were made redundant after journalists at the regional paper refused to take voluntary pay cuts in 2009.
The role of subeditor was being made redundant across the group because of economic difficulties, the tribunal heard.
Ms Monaghan, who had moved from the Ireland on Sundaypaper to the Independent News Media-owned Kerryman, where she worked for 4½ years, also said she should have been offered the chance of an assistant editor position.
Ms Monaghan was represented by the Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists, Seamus Dooley.
The tribunal heard how journalists at the Kerrymanwere alone among the regional titles of INM in refusing to take a voluntary wage cut in early 2009, after financial difficulties in the regional papers were worse than expected.
At a news meeting in the Kerrymanon January 23rd, 2009, which coincided with the deadline for accepting the proposed wage cuts, Kerrymaneditor Declan Malone told journalists a senior INM executive had said those resisting cuts would be "crushed with the most draconian measures" that had ever been introduced, Ms Monaghan said.
Mr Malone had asked that the remark not be repeated, she said. However, she had noted it. She felt the content was threatening, and it was important to take notes.
On February 9th she was one of three staff selected for redundancy.
At the end of the week she was called into the office of Kerrymanmanaging director Michael Brennan. "He said I was to leave the Kerrymanthat day – it was the first day of my notice period. He said it was to avoid business disruption," she told yesterday's hearing.
She asked Mr Brennan whether she was being kicked out, and he said he did not use language like that. “I was involved in the union . . . there was no logic to my selection, no explanation,” she said.
She had campaigned for staff who had been on very low pay and was vocal on that subject with senior management, and was opposed to cuts and redundancies because the Kerryman was already overstretched and needed the staff it had, she said. “I had never been disruptive. It was insulting,” Ms Monaghan told Mr Dooley.
Mr Brennan agreed with his counsel, Conor Kearney, that because of economic difficulties the role of subeditor was being made redundant across the group. He said that “to avoid disruption and in the interests of staff morale it was better not to have people working who were visibly upset”.
The tribunal will issue a decision at a later date.