Staff from publications including The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review walked off the job for 36 hours at 5.30pm (AEST) on Wednesday after learning Fairfax planned to move 66 editorial production jobs from newspapers in Newcastle and Wollongong to New Zealand.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) says the outsourcing of jobs, mostly in sub-editing, means Fairfax is taking cheap shortcuts at the expense of quality journalism.
MEAA Victorian secretary Louise Connor joined about 100 journalists outside Fairfax's Melbourne offices on Thursday.
'Our grave concern is that this company makes the easy decisions to cut costs instead of making the smart decisions to move this company into the new era,' Ms Connor told reporters.
Past experience shows Fairfax's cuts are unlikely to achieve its desired outcomes, Ms Connor said.
'Overseas we've seen this sort of thing before, and it's never led to an increase in audience or an increase in revenue,' Ms Connor said.
The Age journalist Ben Schneiders said staff were worried about the Fairfax board's lack of employee consultation.
The striking journalists acknowledge they could face fines for taking unprotected action, but the risks were worth it, Mr Schneiders said.
'We understand the risk that we took in walking out, but there's frustration at the decision to outsource jobs,' Mr Schneiders said.
About 20 staff joined Marcus Strom, chair of the union house committee, outside Fairfax's Sydney office.
Mr Strom says the company's plan will 'rip the heart out' of regional newsrooms as sub-editors' crucial local expertise is lost.
About 40 jobs are expected to be axed from the Newcastle Herald and Greg Ray, a senior writer at the paper, says journalists and the community have come together to protest.
"We've had a lot of tears, a lot of sorrow, a lot of anger, particularly a sense of betrayal, but this goes much wider than the newspaper, this is a community," he said.
Mr Ray says he is shocked by the cuts because the paper is profitable.
"Newcastle is a very proud, parochial community and to do this, to export our newspaper jobs to New Zealand, you know, this has really hurt this town," he said.
"This is a silly, silly, silly move that's going to destroy more shareholder value in a very good masthead."
In Canberra, about 70 workers with the Fairfax-owned Canberra Times have walked off the job in solidarity with their colleagues.
Literary editor Gia Metherell says staff are very concerned about the offshoring of production jobs.
"This really does set a very dangerous precedent," she said.
"Staff are very concerned that things like that could start happening here, and we want to alert the community that that is not beyond the realms of possibility.
Age journalist Adrian Lowe says he fears similar staff cuts could be made to regional newspapers in Victoria.
"This sets a really worrying precedent for what could happen to newspapers in Victoria," he said.
"There is a lot of newspapers in Victoria in regional areas, in Bendigo, Ballarat, Albury-Wodonga, Warrnambool, that are Fairfax-owned and this could happen to them as well."
Deputy foreign editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Marcus Strom, says Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood has obviously not learnt the lesson of cutting sub-editors.
"We've faced outsourcing of our sub-editors a year ago," he said.
"Not to the drastic extent that's being suggested in Newcastle and the Illawarra. Still we lost 80 jobs.
"The company has been saying they've learnt the lessons there, we've suffered in terms of how we produce our news."
The Victorian secretary of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), Louise Connor, says the whole company has been "spooked".
Unions say they will meet with Fairfax from tomorrow to negotiate a better deal.
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