Various attempts at conciliation having failed, the Saint-Paul group (which publishes the Luxemburger Wort and Luxembourg Times among other titles) announced that it was going to proceed with 71 redundancies within the company, which currently has 330 employees.

The general manager of Saint-Paul, Paul Peckels, informed the employees on Thursday morning by videoconference and announced that the letters of dismissal would be sent out in the next few days.

Saint-Paul was taken over in April by Belgian media group Mediahuis. From the outset, Mediahuis has said it would restructure the company by pushing it more quickly into the digital arena.

The initial redundancy plan, announced in September, provided for 80 redundancies. Today, there is talk of 71 employees being forced to leave the company following the failure of negotiations. But staff claim there has been little transparency and that no one knows how different departments, nor which personnel, will be affected by the lay offs.

The company initially said that redundancies would affect all teams, including journalists.

Questioned by the Tageblatt, Paul Peckels specified that “the procedure was not linked to the new shareholder”, and that redundancies would have been deemed necessary in any case to ensure the future of the publishing house.

This article was first published in French on Paperjam.lu