This is a call for Reach PLC's CEO Jim Mullen, Chief Digital Publisher David Higgerson and Group Editor-in-Chief Lloyd Embley to resign from their positions with immediate effect after their actions left 192 hard-working editorial employees within the company at risk of being made redundant.

This is the culmination of several years of mismanagement during which employees have been treated as dispensable commodities by the company's senior leadership team. This includes an enforced pay cut during Covid which the company was later forced to pay back followed by the culling of numerous roles, strike action that NUJ members were forced to carry out to ensure a reasonable pay rise after years of chronic underpayment and a further wave of redundancies that were announced in January. Now, just weeks after being told their jobs were safe, many of those same employees have now been put at risk of losing their jobs once again. 

Meanwhile, Messrs Mullen, Higgerson and Embley have left local and national newsrooms across the country chronically understaffed while they enjoy their hefty salaries and comfortable lifestyles from the comfort of their ivory tower. Instead of thanking journalists and other editorial staff for their efforts in increasingly trying circumstances, they now have no qualms about leaving nearly 200 people jobless while pursuing a foolhardy expansion into the United States and hiding behind pitiful excuses such as inflation, the consumer economy and a decline in advertising instead of taking accountability for their incompetence.

Their actions mean there will be fewer dedicated journalists serving communities up and down the country at a time when resources have already been stretched beyond an acceptable limit.

They have shown time and time again that they are not up to the task. Perhaps they will kindly fall on their swords instead of putting 192 of their dedicated, hard-working and long-suffering employees on the dole?