Layoffs occurring at Reuters; Nine expected in editorial

An undetermined number of Reuters employees are currently being laid off, a company representative confirmed to Talking Biz News.

Those layoffs include at least nine editorial staffers, according to a Guild memo obtained by Talking Biz News.

“Yes, I can confirm there have been layoffs across Thomson Reuters today, including editorial,” said Barb Burg, vice president and global head of communications at Reuters. “Similar to efforts across the company, the Reuters organization is focusing attention on our global cost structure as well as the need to simplify and ensure we have the skills and expertise within our organization so we can continue to contribute maximum value to the business and our customers.”

Talking Biz News is told that the job cuts are occurring across the company in places such as training and sales but some are occurring in editorial in New York as well.

A Guild representative sent an email to members Tuesday afternoon saying that Reuters has proposed eliminating nine editorial jobs — four in Happauge, three television jobs at its Times Square operation, a television job in Washington and a text job in Atlanta. Other editorial job cuts would come from non-guild positions.

We have also been told that the people from editorial on the list are those who got lower than a 4 on their 2012 reviews. However, another Reuters manager tells us that the layoff for people getting 4 or 5 on annual rating (3 is achieved, 2 and 1 are better than 3) was cancelled because of guild issues.

“This decision literally came in last two days because my original source saw the edit layoff list last week and that was the makeup, plus others,” said a manager. “Then they considered buyouts but the rules require that to be done for senior most guild members and that was too expensive given the other layoffs.”

One editorial manager said that Reuters was over headcount in editorial almost all of last year.

A Reuters employee from the Wealth Management division told Talking Biz News that 25 percent of the workers there lost their jobs.

If you can provide more details, email us at croush@email.unc.edu.