Photo: RNZ/Nick Monro
With proposed job cuts at TV3's Newshub and TVNZ's Midday and Late News, and the loss of Sunday and Fair Go, is it possible for employers to 'do' redundancy well?
The news of the proposed redundancies was delivered in very different ways to each newsroom, each coming as a huge shock to employees.
Top employment lawyer Susan Hornsby-Geluk discusses the fallout with Saturday Morning's Susie Ferguson.
Warner Bros Discovery was "wrong" to give Newshub employees just a few hours' warning of a meeting where they were told their newsroom would close, she says.
Staff were sent an email invite on the morning of 28 February, telling them to attend a meeting at 1pm that would affect their jobs.
At the meeting, staff were told of a proposed "remodelling and restructure" that would see all news production stop from 30 June. More than 200 jobs would be axed.
A Newshub employee spoke to Saturday Morning on the condition of anonymity, saying "you could see the colour drain from everyone's faces" when the invite came through.
"It was clearly bad - very bad."
After the meeting, workers were walking around in a daze, the employee said.
"How does one behave when you've just had the rug pulled out like that?"
Hornsby-Geluk told Saturday Morning she was concerned about how the redundancy talks were carried out.
"This [employee] was just completely shocked ... and that is because they just had no idea what the purpose of the meeting was and it just illustrates how wrong and inappropriate that was," she said.
Ideally, employers would give their staff at least a day's notice before such a meeting, she said.
They also needed to give more of an indication of what the meeting was about.
"Ideally they would have given employees at least, say, 24 hours' notice of the meeting and said 'look, there are important business decisions that need to be made that do potentially affect staff roles - we are having a briefing tomorrow to discuss this', so at least people don't come in completely cold and then hear this completely unannounced and for the first time."
Hornsby-Geluk compared Warner Bros Discovery's handling of the situation to TVNZ's redundancy announcement just a week later.
On 7 March, the state broadcaster announced it intended to cut 68 jobs - 9 percent of its total staff - and axe programmes such as Sunday, Fair Go and the midday bulletins.
TVNZ gave its employees 24 hours' notice of the redundancy meeting and laid the groundwork for the discussion well in advance, Hornsby-Geluk said.
"TVNZ had announced the week prior there had been a significant loss over the last six months and had been talking for two months around the need for cost-cutting and staff reductions. It appears there was far less of that in the Newshub situation where people just turned up out of the blue and announced the closure of the whole newsroom.
"It's far better for an employer and for the affected staff if they have some inkling this is going to happen in advance."
However, the fact news of the impending redundancies had leaked to other media before the meeting was not ideal, Hornsby-Geluk said.
"Employees should never find out after other people are not affected, so however that got out into the media and the fact it was circulating two days prior is really unfortunate."
She said it was not always possible to pull a scheduled meeting forward in cases like that.
Employers were required to be sensitive and responsive throughout the redundancy process, but there was "really no good way to deliver that sort of news", she said.
In a statement, a Warner Bros Discovery spokesperson said the company's focus was always on its people.
"While we are working through our consultation process, we will not be commenting."
TVNZ has also been contacted for comment.
