Job security has arisen as an area of substantial concern even before the economic impacts of Covid-19 became apparent. The Senate Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism (2018) raised this as an area of growing risk for the nation. According to a columnist at a major commercial news organisation:
Journalism today is woefully under resourced. There is too little time and not enough people to deliver news in a comprehensive way and journalists are stretched. Too many errors are made […] In pursuit of cost savings many middle layer journalists have been replaced by younger and cheaper workers. A few bigger brand name journalists have been retained to create the veneer of the product. I believe this has taken place across most media companies.
While there are redundancy clauses and long periods of notice in the case of dismissal based on the time served, the MEAA acknowledges this is a difficult period of structural decline for the industry. Josephi (2011) had already pointed out an increasing use of casuals and freelancers at the time of the previous MDM edition, and this has barely changed since then. The union attempts to enforce that, if a journalist has been a casual for more than six months and has worked a regular pattern of shifts, they have the right to become a regular member of staff. Yet in a time of structural decline, media organisations are reluctant to take on permanent staff.
With the broader downturn in the media, there has been an acceleration of job insecurity, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. The MEAA has advised its members to be careful to not sign unlawful contracts during the Covid-19 period. They advise: “Any waiver that asks an employee to indemnify their employer for any damages that may arise from Covid should not be signed” (MEAA, 2020).
