The New Statesman’s associate editor, Barbara Gunnell, and literary editor, Ian Irvine, are facing redundancy.

Staff at the magazine are understood to be shocked at the redundancies, which come as the magazine’s management are refusing to grant the magazine’s National Union of Journalists’ chapel recognition.

Arts editor Alice O’Keefe has resigned from the magazine, apparently reluctantly, to take a job at the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights.

After the redundancy process is completed, the three-day-a-week arts editor and three-day-a-week literary editor posts will be merged. The magazine plans to appoint a full-time culture editor, which Irvine is free to apply for.

The weekly’s owners, Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson and entrepreneur Mike Danson, have repeatedly refused to grant the chapel voluntary recognition. The NUJ chapel plans to seek statutory recognition.

… more at the Media Guardian