The Age house committee member Miki Perkins said there was a moral choice for Hywood to make, as Fairfax staff returned to work in Melbourne and Sydney after a seven-day strike.

“Revelations over the past week have shown that Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood was paid as much as $7.2 million in 2016,” Perkins read from a statement to picketers in Melbourne on Wednesday.

“That’s roughly enough to employ 57 journalists, yet Mr Hywood insists that 125 of our colleagues must be sacked.”

Perkins said Hywood had presided over a “culture of executive neglect”.

“Our 150-year-old mastheads are on their knees after years of cost-cutting, and private equity companies are now circling it,” she said.

Hywood last week told investors the company would push ahead with the cuts to get the company on a sustainable footing.

Perkins said the strike had given journalists more strength to claw back jobs after the company decided to save $30 million through job cuts.

The voluntary redundancy process is expected to start immediately, but journalists are pushing for it to last for three weeks to ensure there don’t have to be forced redundancies.

More than 10,000 people have signed a petition to save the jobs, Perkins said.

Sydney Morning Herald journalists joined colleagues at The Age in the vote of no confidence in the chief executive.

The company has declined to comment on the vote or return to work.

But a Herald journalist told AAP that staff were due to meet with management on Thursday morning.

– AAP