Five employees of Vedomosti wrote a statement to the Ostankino inter-district prosecutor’s office and the State Labor Inspectorate in Moscow after receiving notices “about layoffs and upcoming dismissal” in connection with the abolition of the online edition of the publication from April 20.
As the editor-in-chief of the Vedomosti.ru site Alexander Malakhov explained to RBC, in addition to him, the statement was also signed by correspondents Vladislav Puzyrev, Tatyana Morozova, Natalya Ivankina and the site editor Yegor Efimchik. On the Vedomosti website, nine people are named as employees of the Vedomosti.ru division, not counting Malakhov.
Morozova told RBC that no one discussed the dissolution of the unit with the employees of the online editorial office: “The HR director kept the topic of the conversation secret until the moment when we were called one at a time and notices were read out in front of witnesses, as if it were a court verdict. The CEO who signed the notices never showed up and explained himself.” She noted that “the division brings a large share of the traffic,” and the reorganization will not improve the work and “carries risks” for the publication.
The statement, a partial text of which is available to RBC, says that the reduction has signs of fictitious, since everyone except Malakhov, under the threat of dismissal, was asked to move to the editorial office of the Vedomosti newspaper with similar job titles and salaries. Malakhov was offered the post of editor-in-chief with a reduction in salary. “The transformations carried out by the employer do not lead to a decrease in the total number of employees, as is directly assumed by paragraph 2 of Art. 81 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation with a reduction, but are used for the purpose of forcibly transferring workers from one structural unit to another with a deterioration in their situation and putting pressure on them, ”the statement says.
Malakhov is now suing JSC Business News Media, the publisher of Vedomosti, follows from the base of the Moscow City Court. In January, the Ostankinsky District Court of Moscow received two lawsuits, the cause of the dispute in both cases was formulated “as invalidating the conclusion of an internal audit, disciplinary sanctions, certification results, and the results of a competition for filling a position in the state (municipal) service.” Hearings on these claims are scheduled for March 10 and 22.
Malakhov claims that the employer first brought him to disciplinary responsibility in August 2021. But this order, relating to skipping a meeting with the CEO, was subsequently canceled by the labor inspectorate, and two other penalties, which Malakhov considers “far-fetched”, are being challenged in court. The decision to abolish the online editorial office was made after the publisher got acquainted with the lawsuits.
In particular, Malakhov, according to him, received one of the penalties a few days after he refused to write a text on the creation of a “global association of business media”, which at that time included only Vedomosti and Federalpress from the media. These publications have one owner – Ivan Eremin.
Malakhov also claims that the order to abolish the online editorial office was signed by Mikhail Nelyubin, CEO of Business News Media JSC, the next day, when Malakhov sent a letter to Vedomosti management describing problems with audience indicators, subscribers and citation in the publication during the acting . editor-in-chief Irina Kazmina (she also holds the position of acting editor-in-chief of the Vedomosti.ru website).
General Director of “Business Press Media” Mikhail Nelyubin, acting editor-in-chief of Vedomosti Irina Kazmina, the owner of the publication Ivan Eremin and his representative did not respond to requests. RBC also turned to the Ostankino Interdistrict Prosecutor’s Office and the State Labor Inspectorate for comment.
Eremin became the owner of Vedomosti in May 2020, having bought the newspaper from Ivetta Voronova. At the same time, before the deal, Demyan Kudryavtsev, Vladimir Voronov and Martin Pompadour called themselves investors of the publication. For Vedomosti, 160 million rubles were paid, in addition, the new owner for 14 million rubles. entered into an agreement with former investors on the assignment of claims on previously issued loans.
Malakhov has been working as the chief editor of Vedomosti.ru since the summer of 2020, in the fall of 2021 he was acting editor-in-chief of the Vedomosti newspaper for several weeks.
How Vedomosti is developing under the new owner
The latest available Mediascope meter data on the audience of the Vedomosti.ru website refers to October 2021: then the monthly all-Russian audience on desktops and mobile devices was 2.8 million people over 12 years old; a year earlier, in October 2020, it was more than 5.7 million people.
The audience of one printed issue of Vedomosti in May-October 2021 was, according to Mediascope estimates, 101.3 thousand residents of large cities over 16 years old, a year earlier it was 163 thousand people.