Wellington, Feb 23 NZPA - Plans to still take a dividend out of cash-strapped TVNZ this year shows Prime Minister John Key is not willing to "walk the talk" on preserving jobs, union officials said today.

TVNZ said last week that advertising revenues were 10 percent below budget, which represented an annualised shortfall of income of $30m.

Job losses from the 1040-strong workforce at TVNZ, most of which is based in Auckland, have not been ruled out.

In the year to June 30, 2008, the broadcaster paid the Crown a dividend of $10.3m after reporting an after-tax profit of $19.4m.

TVNZ will decide this year's dividend after the annual accounts are audited around August. The company has a policy of paying a dividend of 70 percent of profit after tax.

Mr Key told Newstalk ZB there were no plans to waive the dividend.

He accepted there may be job losses.

"That may also be wholly appropriate if they need to get to a flatter sort of slimmer operating structure... We're in difficult times and every company, whether it's government-owned or private sector-owned, has to consider how to best operate," he said.

"Their advertising revenue is substantially reduced -- it's true frankly across most of these media outlets, the advertising revenue's down, businesses are cutting in that area and it's having an impact on them."

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little said many shareholders were forgoing dividends to allow companies to operate through the recession.

"The Government has to take a lead in relation to the businesses it owns, so as well as talking about saving jobs they've got to demonstrate action when the opportunity arises to do so," Mr Little said.

"This is not a time to choose dividends over jobs."

Mr Little is seeking to become the Labour Party president later this year.

Public Service Association national secretary Richard Wagstaff said TVNZ had already shed staff during a recent restructuring and the dividend decision raised questions about the Government wanting to keep New Zealanders in work.

NZPA PAR il mt gt