The Finnish public broadcaster YLE announced last week that it is going to cut 160 jobs, including 50 staff member from the production unit. A total of 74 permanent positions will be shelved, of which 10 employees are from the news and current affairs division. The rest of the cuts will be met by a reduction of the use of fixed-term contract workers.
The job losses and belt-tightening measure follow the Finnish government’s decision earlier this year to freeze the inflation-related increase on the so-called YLE tax in 2015, which resulted according to YLE in a €10 million funding shortfall for 2015, although YLE employees claim the deficit to be closer to €4 to €5 million.
The original job cutting plan was of 185 staff members, but YLE Chief Executive Lauri Kivinen said he was able to ‘soften’ the blow by implementing retirement arrangements and internal re-organization. Those include a refocusing of its activities on online activities and a shift from in-house drama production to external commissioning.