LETTER | I was saddened to learn of the plight of so many media workers this week and would like to applaud Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil for highlighting this issue.

It is timely that his ministry is taking the initiative to intervene on the workers’ behalf, but the situation would not have arisen if some media owners were more responsible.

How can these owners call themselves the fourth estate and hold leaders accountable when they themselves are guilty of wanton disregard for workers in their own industry?

I was shocked to learn that in the last 12 months news portals like Malaysiakini, Free Malaysia Today, The Malay Mail, The Malaysian Gazette, and Scoop have retrenched a combined total of around 100 workers.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysiakini under former editor-in-chief Steven Gan required senior leaders to take a hefty 20 percent pay cut so that those at the lower end of the salary scale did not have to suffer salary adjustments.

This was a noble approach, so why are companies rushing to retrench staff now instead of looking at these measures?

There have also been issues with unpaid wages and benefits involving Petra News Sdn Bhd which publishes news portals The Vibes, The Malaysian Insight, and Getaran.

In fact, 15 employees spent Valentine’s Day filing a police report demanding the immediate payment of their Employees Provident Fund (EPF) contribution, monthly tax deductions, and Social Security Organisation contributions for 2024.

It is irresponsible of media owners to allow workers to endure outstanding payments of salaries, EPF, or benefits.

Another unacceptable situation is that the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) collective agreement for theSun lapsed seven years ago, but the management is still not coming to the negotiation table!

The collective agreement signed for 2016-18 between theSun and the NUJ was the last. The 2019-21 and 2022-24 agreements have not been negotiated and till today the NUJ is struggling to get a date to start!

The last few years have also seen the closures of Tamil Nesan and the original Utusan Malaysia, followed by claims of incomplete compensation.

In October 2019, Utusan Malaysia’s 862 employees were caught off guard by a notice issued by the company on the very day it ceased operations.

Despite compensation being agreed upon, the workers were not fully paid and they have been unable to remedy the matter through the courts as the previous company was liquidated. The publication was revived with new owners who are not legally bound by the compensation terms.

Poor workers are suffering and media owners should never have let it reach this stage.

Perhaps one reason this is happening is that media workers don’t enjoy collective representation as they did in the glory days of print media.

This low representation is mainly due to the gradual transformation to the online news format, but some unscrupulous managements are also stooping to union-busting tactics.

This includes hiring junior workers as executives, pressing workers into double duty without compensation, and deliberately hiring employees but extending their probation and eventually not confirming them.

Some companies are even openly using artificial intelligence to replace workers.

I am glad that this past week’s meeting was the first step towards recognising the sacrifice and struggle of those in the media industry. I hope the ministry and the owners can work together to help ensure that workers are properly compensated and trained for the future.

This week, the Media Council Bill will be discussed in Parliament. Among other things, I hope that it too can play a role in ensuring the welfare of media industry workers.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.