Here's what I wrote Friday in CapCon's weekly open thread (an idea I suggested to a former CapCon editor):
The Times Union has canceled its contract with the Newspaper Guild, as part of its corporate strategy to lay off more experienced reporters and editors and further degrade its news product.
As a result, I will not be commenting at, or clicking on, CapCon until there is a new contract.
It's the least I can do.
Indeed it is -- I never buy nor advertise in the paper, but I did go the website several times a day and participated in its most popular blog.
Since February, the publisher of the TU has been George Hearst III, great-grandson of William Randolph Hearst and namesake of the Hearst in Deadwood.
He's been at the TU for more than a decade, "working" his way up to the top job and taking a lot of credit for the paper's charitable endeavors, most of which involve free display ads.
And this wealthy-from-birth guy is now playing hardball with the middle-class workers who actually produce the paper.
Here's some of what he got published last Thursday in his family's newspaper about their plan to lay off/buy out even more journalists, in a "letter" to "loyal readers and advertisers":
After more than nine months of negotiations, today we have canceled our collective bargaining agreement with the Newspaper Guild, covering 240 of the 450 Times Union employees. The contract was set to expire August 1, 2008.
We took this step only after making every effort to reach an agreement at the bargaining table. Central to both management and Guild bargaining representatives are the issues of seniority and the ability to outsource work -- areas in which we currently have no ability to consider the business needs of the Times Union or the talents of our employees.
snip
It is my privilege, along with my management team, to face the task of continuing to serve the Capital Region and, eventually, to deliver this enterprise in good health to the next stewards of this great tradition.
Yeah, right.
Tim O'Brien, president of the Guild local at the TU and a longtime reporter, obviously disagrees with the Hearst billionaire view of this matter:
This is a sad, sad day for Times Union employees, readers and advertisers. The company is hellbent on wanting to lay off employees regardless of how loyally they have served and to outsource jobs out of the Capital Region. And because they could not convince our members of the rightness of their cause, they launched an unprecedented attack on our union.
George Hearst falsely claimed we have exaggerated the implications of this move. The reality is this is a union town, and every union member knows what this action means. The Times Union can expect the phones to start ringing off the hook with calls canceling the newspaper. We told the company the day it first threatened this that it was the dumbest thing the company can do. They ignored us at their peril. They cannot say they weren't warned.
In another post at the same link, O'Brien lays out some of the basic issues:
Hearst said the Times Union is looking to lay off 65 to 75 workers between the exempt and Guild ranks. Despite assurances cuts would fall equally among Guild members and management, he went on to estimate that 60 jobs would come out of the 240 the Guild represents and the remaining 10 to 15 would come from the 110 people in the exempt ranks.
As the Guild has already documented, the Times Union is already top heavy with management, with one "manager" for every 2.5 employees.
The final numbers will show whether the company is sincere about equally sharing the pain. But Hearst's initial estimates make it appear that cuts will fall more heavily on our members.
Seniority is also a major issue:
Guild leaders said they are willing to be flexible in dealing with the seniority issue on layoffs but continued to say it was unfair to leave someone with 30 years' dedicated service equally vulnerable as a new hire.
Despite their constant talk of flexibility, the company remained rigid on that idea and on its proposal to be able to outsource any and all jobs.
A few personal observations from a longtime TU reader:
1. The TU has been cutting the newsroom and local news coverage for at least 20 years, to the point that many cities and towns (besides Albany and Colonie) get no coverage at all, unless a tabloid crime happens there.
2. The Hearsts have made a lot of money in Albany, where they owned the predominant newspaper in the market for decades. There are other dailies and weeklies, based in smaller cities and towns, but the TU is the major player, and certainly reaped 30-plus profit margins for years.
3. The best TU reporters (O'Brien, Paul Grondahl, Carol DeMare, Brendan Lyons, etc.) have been there for at least 10 years. Kids from Columbia are cheaper certainly, but they do not have, and may not hang around long enough to get, the institutional knowledge that is helpful in getting the real story.
4. The TU management types I've been acquainted with are arrogant assholes.
I know it could be worse for TU journalists given what Hearst has done in closing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and threatening to close the San Francisco Chronicle.
But what the Hearst billionaires, represented in person by own of their own, are trying to do to the journalists who create the Times Union every day really sucks. |
