As pri­vate com­pa­nies fall vic­tim to the eco­nom­ic fall­out re­sult­ing from COVID-19, sev­er­al per­ma­nent mem­bers of the ed­i­to­r­i­al staff at Dai­ly News Lim­it­ed (News­day) have been tem­porar­i­ly laid off.

At least three se­nior re­porters–See­ta Per­sad, Car­ol Ma­troo and Mar­lene Au­gus­tine–were hand­ed their let­ters on Fri­day which was signed by Hu­man Re­source Man­ag­er De­bra Sut­ton, who ad­vised the three-month lay­off would be with­out pay.

It was un­clear up to late Sat­ur­day, how many oth­er mem­bers of staff were giv­en let­ters.

Cit­ing the pe­ri­od June 8 to Au­gust 31 in the let­ter, Sut­ton claimed if the com­pa­ny's eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances changed with­in the pe­ri­od out­lined, the em­ploy­ees may be re­called to work with a ten-day no­tice of the new date.

Fail­ing this, Sut­ton in­formed the em­ploy­ees they would be re­called for con­fi­den­tial dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing their years of ser­vice and what op­tions were avail­able to them.

Con­tact­ed Sat­ur­day, one of the re­porters who has 11 years ser­vice with the com­pa­ny was very de­spon­dent.

She ques­tioned, "Why wasn't some oth­er op­tion em­ployed first? Why didn't they ex­plore a salary re­duc­tion for em­ploy­ees and even man­agers? This way, the com­pa­ny could have con­tin­ued em­ploy­ing every­body as they ex­plore ways to turn things around. It would not have been just the se­lect few who were giv­en let­ters."

Dis­heart­ened over the move she de­scribed as cav­a­lier, the up­set em­ploy­ee said her years of ser­vice and du­ty to News­day had been tossed aside with­out con­sid­er­a­tion.

She claimed the last-in-first-out pol­i­cy was not be­ing ap­plied in this in­stance, as there were at least six oth­er re­porters who were hired long af­ter her.

A sec­ond re­porter who had sev­en years ser­vice said she was de­ter­mined not to sit down and mope.

Re­fus­ing to be­come de­pressed, she in­di­cat­ed she would find the strength to pick up the pieces as she al­ways did.

The com­pa­ny has re­port­ed­ly said though the em­ploy­ees will not be re­ceiv­ing a salary dur­ing this pe­ri­od, but they will con­tin­ue to be cov­ered by the med­ical plan while pen­sion ben­e­fits al­so con­tin­ue to ac­crue.

In an in­ter­view with CNC 3, News­day's Ed­i­tor-in-Chief Judy Ray­mond said it was a hard hit for the com­pa­ny which had been on a re­cruit­ment dri­ve pri­or to COVID-19.

Claim­ing News­day had man­aged to main­tain high stan­dards dur­ing the pan­dem­ic by al­low­ing re­porters to work from home, she said their on­line read­er­ship had al­so in­creased.

At least two of the re­porters have in­di­cat­ed their in­ten­tion to seek le­gal ad­vice on the mat­ter.

Mean­while, the work­ers' rep­re­sen­ta­tive–the Bankers In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU–plans to take ac­tion against News­day for vi­o­lat­ing Sec­tions 40 and 63 of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act.

BIG­WU of­fi­cials said the com­pa­ny has re­peat­ed­ly re­sist­ed re­quests to pro­vide its fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion and the cri­te­ria used to se­lect staff to be laid off. An of­fi­cial said this meant the par­ties were un­able to en­gage in any kind of in­formed dis­cus­sions.