Journalists at Fairfax newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Age have voted to strike until Monday over job cuts and pay negotiations.
Yesterday's walkout came just days after Fairfax Media announced it would cut 550 jobs under a business improvement program. The journalists say they are angry at a lack of consultation from management and ''will not be treated like animals''.
Journalists at Fairfax's Sunday publications, the Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age, as well as NSW regional titles The Herald in Newcastle and the Illawarra Mercury, voted to strike until Monday.
The Canberra Times is not involved in the strike.
Senior Age journalist Michael Bachelard said staff at the Melbourne broadsheet who attended yesterday's stopwork meeting were angry about the cuts and long-term delays in pay negotiations.
''Age staff are passionate about their masthead and their readers, and are disappointed that the managers of the company appear willing to sacrifice quality journalism for the sake of the bottom line,'' he said.
''We'll make the same demands we have from the beginning that the company negotiate with us on enterprise agreements and have the guts to inform us properly about the cuts.''
The Victorian branch secretary of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Louise Connor, said staff were angry at a lack of consultation from management. Crucial Fairfax printers in Sydney and Melbourne have remained at work. AAP