Network 10’s American parent company, Skydance, has offered staff a one-time ‘buyout’ to leave the business. The move has prompted warnings that it could run afoul of Australian workplace law.
The offer coincides with a global push by Skydance mandating that staff return to the office five days a week. Here’s what we know.
Network 10 and Skydance – quick links
Who owns Network 10?
Network 10 has been owned by Paramount since 2017. In August 2025, David Ellison’s Skydance Media completed its US$8 billion merger with Paramount Global, making Skydance the network’s ultimate owner.
In October this year, Paramount completed its takeover of Warner Bros Discovery. The combined company, renamed Skydance, now spans Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, American networks CBS, CNN and HBO, as well as Network 10 and Paramount+ in Australia.
What is the buyout offer?
In late October, Ellison and Co-CEO Ynon Kreiz told staff in an internal memo that Skydance would run a one-time voluntary buyout program. At the same time, a five-day in-office policy would be phased in across the company by location.
Eligible employees receive individual offers with personalised terms and a limited window to decide. In the US, Business Insider reported the standard package was two weeks’ pay for every year of service. It’s not known whether the same terms apply in Australia.
According to The Age, Network 10 staff have been invited to consider personalised exit packages under the program.
Has this happened before?
Yes. When Skydance took over Paramount in 2025, it ordered staff in Los Angeles and New York back to the office full-time and offered buyouts to those unwilling to return. About 600 employees took the package, at a reported cost of around US$185 million.
Is it a redundancy?
Skydance says no. It has assured the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the media union, that the arrangement isn’t a redundancy program.
Australian media and marketing outlet Mumbrella understands Network 10 hasn’t announced any redundancies and intends to replace anyone who leaves. The offer is framed as a way out for staff who don’t want to work in the office full-time.
Why are lawyers concerned?
Employment lawyer Michael Byrnes told Mumbrella that the label may not matter. If the buyouts form part of a broader restructure or significant workplace change, they could trigger consultation obligations under Network 10’s enterprise agreement, even when staff leave voluntarily.
‘The obligations of an enterprise agreement can’t be contracted out of,’ he said.
Byrnes explained that a redundancy occurs when an employer terminates a role it no longer needs. A buyout, by contrast, could be treated as a mutually agreed resignation. In that case, technically, it may not count as a redundancy.
The catch for workers is that staff who accept a buyout could walk away with less than they would receive if their role was formally made redundant.
Byrnes stressed he hadn’t seen the terms of the offer and couldn’t say whether any law had been broken. However, he warned that multinationals sometimes wrongly assume their US employment practices will satisfy Australian law.
What does the union say?
The MEAA’s acting director of media, Matthew Burton, said members at Network 10 had fought for years to secure fair redundancy entitlements for exactly these circumstances, and that Skydance should follow the established process if it needs to cut headcount.
Burton described the move as an attempt to undermine workers’ rights, and criticised what he called an imported American approach that disregards Australian workplace protections.
What happens next?
If the MEAA can show Network 10 has breached its enterprise agreement, Byrnes said the union could take an industrial dispute to the Fair Work Commission or pursue court action. Breaches can attract penalties under the Fair Work Act.
For now, Network 10 staff face a decision on the offer within the window they’ve been given. Meanwhile, the network’s US owner continues to cut costs as it integrates two of Hollywood’s biggest studios.
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