The government proposes to apply to the wage guarantee fund to pay salaries to JN, DN and TSF.

This Thursday, the government invited the Global Media Group to activate the Wage Guarantee Fund to pay wages to the workers of the Jornal de Notícias, Diário de Notícias and TSF.

The wage guarantee fund ensures the repayment of employers’ debts to employees in the event of insolvency or economic difficulties.

The government is following the group’s situation with “concern” as it considers it “an impoverishment of information pluralism that poses a serious threat to democracy,” the Ministry of Culture said in a note sent to the group. CM.

Let us remind you that the payment of salaries to Global Media employees for December has been postponed. In the note, the government makes clear that “investors should have been informed of the financial circumstances of the group in which they chose to invest, so it is now implausible for them to claim ignorance.”

The workers of the Jornal de Notícias, Diário de Notícias, O Jogo and TSF are monitored by the government to ensure compliance with labor laws.

The Minister of Culture, Pedro Adau e Silva, sent a letter this Thursday to the regulator to understand the consequences of the crisis that the communications group is currently experiencing.

According to the government, “it is the workers of these bodies who face the most serious difficulties”, but “more broadly, the climate of instability that is being observed this Thursday in the editorial offices of Global Media corresponds to the impoverishment of pluralism of information, which poses a serious threat to democracy.”

The executive committee of GMG informed its employees this Thursday in an internal message to which Lusa had access that it could not pay salaries for December, stressing that the financial situation is “extremely serious.”

This situation, according to the company, was facilitated by the “unexpected retreat” of the state from the business of purchasing shares that the group has in the Lusa agency, the “unjustified suspension” of the use of the account secured with Banco Atlântico. Europe for six years and “all the political-party exploitation” carried out around Global Media.

Regarding this negotiation process, the Ministry of Culture emphasized that its goal was “so that the state can take a more significant position in the shareholder structure of Agência Lusa, in order to preserve the autonomy of this agency and its role in the defense of journalism.”

“Such an operation had a strategic purpose and, obviously, could not be considered as a solution to the short-term treasury problems that the new shareholder ultimately faced,” he said.