Pro-Beijing Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily, whose global headquarters is in Hong Kong and whose Canadian operations are partly owned by Canadian media company Torstar Corporation, announced immediate layoffs of 15 employees Tuesday afternoon.
Layoffs will include all its translators and page editors who are not part of the management.
Howard Law, a representative at the Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild, said Sing Tao notified its staff of the layoffs.
“They are taking all the editing jobs and moving them to Sing Tao Hong Kong so they will not have any more editors (in Toronto),” said Law. Law does not know what Sing Tao will do with the managers.
Law believes the quality of the newspaper will be affected.
He said, “If they go ahead with editing and translation done in Hong Kong, we'd expect there would be at least slightly lower quality because they will have people who don’t know Toronto and don’t know Canada, and don’t know Canadian idioms. So I think they will have some mistakes.”
Law said management has yet to explain to the union the reasons for the layoffs, or why translation and editing work is being moved to Hong Kong.
He said the union will meet with the members affected and decide what to do next.
“The collect agreement does not prevent the company (Sing Tao) from contracting out work, but any contracting out still has to be legal”. They will consider what legal options they might have.
