Pe­ter Christo­pher

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Months af­ter one of the coun­try’s news­pa­pers closed its doors, an­oth­er has in­formed staff that it is re­trench­ing em­ploy­ees.

Yes­ter­day, the Trinidad Ex­press in­formed the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU), which rep­re­sents its staff, that the com­pa­ny is plan­ning a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise that would see ed­i­to­r­i­al staff re­duced from 33 to 26 em­ploy­ees.

Un­der the re­struc­tur­ing plan out­lined, two sub-ed­i­tors, a night ed­i­tor (a po­si­tion be­ing made re­dun­dant) and four re­porters (three from Port-of-Spain and one from San Fer­nan­do) are ex­pect­ed to be re­trenched.

BIG­WU has in­di­cat­ed that it in­tends to take ac­tion to pro­tect work­ers.

In a let­ter to staff, the union said, “We deeply un­der­stand that this is an in­cred­i­bly tense and dis­tress­ing time for every­one. Fac­ing the threat of job loss­es strikes at the very heart of our liveli­hoods and our fam­i­lies. How­ev­er, we want to as­sure you in no un­cer­tain terms: your Union is ac­tive­ly seized of this mat­ter.”

The union added, “While the com­pa­ny frames this as a ‘pro­posed re­struc­tur­ing re­view,’ strict le­gal pro­ce­dures must be fol­lowed un­der the law. We will hold man­age­ment ful­ly ac­count­able to those le­gal frame­works. The Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) is al­ready re­view­ing the de­tails, and the Ex­ec­u­tive will be is­su­ing a for­mal, ro­bust re­sponse to the com­pa­ny very soon.”

A meet­ing on the pro­posed re­struc­tur­ing was held with staff yes­ter­day.

The an­nounce­ment comes just two weeks af­ter the news­pa­per’s par­ent com­pa­ny, One Caribbean Me­dia, re­port­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of $4.36 mil­lion for the three-month pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, 2026.

How­ev­er, in its fi­nan­cial re­port on May 7, Chair­man Faa­rees Ho­sein said, “The Trinidad me­dia busi­ness con­tin­ued to nav­i­gate a chal­leng­ing ad­ver­tis­ing mar­ket, which is show­ing ear­ly signs of re­cov­ery. We are rolling out en­hanced mul­ti­me­dia pack­ages and com­pelling val­ue propo­si­tions. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we are mak­ing progress to­ward achiev­ing bet­ter cost and struc­tur­al ef­fi­cien­cies. Our oth­er re­gion­al me­dia busi­ness­es have demon­strat­ed re­silience in a tough in­dus­try land­scape and are al­so pur­su­ing strate­gic ini­tia­tives to se­cure sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­els.”

It has been a dif­fi­cult year for lo­cal me­dia, with re­duced ad­ver­tis­ing from both gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties im­pact­ing op­er­a­tions across the in­dus­try.

In Jan­u­ary, the News­day ceased op­er­a­tions, with Maria Daniel of Ernst & Young (EY) ap­point­ed to over­see the liq­ui­da­tion and wind-up of the com­pa­ny’s af­fairs. Last week, sev­er­al of the com­pa­ny’s as­sets at El So­cor­ro were list­ed for sale. Six­ty em­ploy­ees were left job­less fol­low­ing the clo­sure.

In Ju­ly last year, Dig­i­cel Group shut down its dig­i­tal me­dia house Loop and an­nounced that re­gion­al sports broad­cast­er Sports­Max would have its fi­nal broad­cast on Au­gust 8. More than 100 work­ers were af­fect­ed by that de­ci­sion.