Dow Jones to seek wage freeze for union newsroom workers

Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, Barron’s and Marketwatch, said Friday that it would seek a salary freeze for union-represented staff as it conducts negotiations for successor collective-bargaining agreements going forward.

The measure was one of many outlined by the company in its attempts to lower its expenses in the future. The company said it had been successful in cutting $100 million in costs in its first year under News Corp. ownership, and expected to realize an additional $40 million of annual savings in the fiscal year ending June 2010.

Dow Jones said those cost cuts have come from a variety of measures, including:

Sharing services across the organization by consolidating common services with sister News Corp. companies and common functions across Dow Jones businesses. Several corporate functions such as internal audits, tax and treasury services have been reduced as a result of the integration with News Corp. Similarly, cooperation between the Journal and the New York Post in New York and The Wall Street Journal Europe and the newspapers of News International in London has resulted in solid savings.

Optimizing global footprint by leveraging News Corp. offices to consolidate office space, especially in major media hubs such as New York and London, closing smaller offices, renegotiating leases, subleasing excess capacity at existing locations and expanding the “work anywhere” program.

Outsourcing certain functions in print production, IT infrastructure and HR benefits administration as well as select call center operations. For example, Dow Jones entered into contract printing agreements with the Denver Newspaper Agency and the Chicago Tribune.

So far, three of 17 production facilities have been closed and discussions are ongoing for similar regional partnerships for printing and delivery of The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s in other regions. In one such partnership, Dow Jones is now printing the Boston Herald, making further profitable use of its printing capacity.

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