Off line a Booth employee gave me some startling comparisons of the severance pay situation with those leaving one or more of the Booth papers.
One writer with 21 years of service has ended up getting two weeks severance, while a 12-year part-time employee is walking away with 12 weeks of severance.
How does that happen?
Severance is based on your current work status. If you're currently full-time you'll get paid for however long you've held your current status.
That creates a situation where say a writer who was full-time for 15 years, but dropped to part-time status 3 years ago and is still part-time will get severance based on only 3 years service.
A person who worked at the paper for 15 years on a part-time basis (and trust me the part-timers work way more than the maximum 29-30 hours a week they get paid for) and was promoted to full-time a year ago will maybe get one or at the most two weeks severance based on only the one full-time year worked.
Once the Newhouse folks found a way around the lifetime job pledge it appears all bets were off and leaving a trail of folks wondering about the truck that ran over them.
In reality, employees were always on double secret probation and could be fired at any time, for any reason. When a great reporter angered the bosses at the Flint Journal a number of years ago he was fired for very dubious reasons.
When the employee sued them under a whistleblower law, did the Journal's attorney's argue the facts about the employee's dismissal.
No, they successfully battled the civil case based on the fact that Michigan is an at-will employee State and that they didn't have to show or prove any reason to fire the employee. In other words, the job pledge was always meaningless. This court case (and I was deposed as a witness for the employee) was a number of years ago before any of the current turmoil.
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12 comments:
Well this explains why they recently made 3 part-time employees full time a little over a year ago only to let them go with only a years severance. This company is without conscience and is literally making me Sick.I realize business is business but when you have a family that made a billion dollars last year and have to screw their LOYAL employees out of what is chump change to them is dispicable. I really believe what comes around goes around and they will get theres and then some. You can't take it all with you and some things cannot be bought.
um, I hope this was an April Fool's story.......
The promise was never worth the powder to blow it up.
Both sides just acted like it was.
Kept the union out of the newsroom.
But, to be fair, the first buyout offer was the richest ever offered — or likely ever to be offered — at any newsroom, anywhere.
If you didn't take that ... well.
Alot of us were never offered anything and the most recent had no choice in the matter so I would hardly call it a buyout. Now after all is said and done some are left to work and still try to make money for these people with less people,less money and less moral. I believe there was something to the job guarantee also ;other wise they would have never changed the terms of the guarantee. I feel bad for the folks that lost their jobs but I also feel bad for the folks that have to stay for one reason or another. SAD
no joke. Actually comes with a "We don't have to give you anything" line.
BTW, each of the two top newhouses made over a billion last year in the worst market since 1938, not a billion combined.
Commenter 3 is wrong. The second buyout was the most generous.
Buyout 1: 2 weeks per year
Buyout 2: 4 weeks per year
Severance 3: 1 wk per yr
Severance 4.
Sorry were CLOSED
Yeah, I think the buyout that anonymous 7:16 was referring to was the "big one" of 2007. I feel bad for people that were on the fence and chose to stay but I don't feel the need to say, "I told you so". I don't think some people who stayed on ever thought it would get this bad.
Second buyout most generous.
True.
Forgot the first — it was 55+ only, or a combo thing, as I recall.
I stand corrected.
Jim, do i need to write a letter to someone about this apologizing, and do you keep a tally sheet of poster errors?
No need for an apology letter. Besides I wouldn't know where to mail it.
Mistakes are part of the business. I make plenty of my own, which I continually apologize for.
We are all human afterall.
I am so sad for all the employees that were let go. Those of us that are left don't know how we will pay our bills either. My pay was cut by over 30 per cent. One of my co-workers who has been with the paper over 25 years had their pay cut by 50 per cent.
I still have a job at The Flint Journal. I went to my mailbox today and guess what I found. A big envelope that contained COBRA information. On the first page in bold print it states "The enclosed notice does not (not is underlined by the way) mean you are losing your group health insurance!" On page 2 it states "This notice generally explains group health insurance continuation coverage, when it may become available, and what you need to do to protect the right to receive it." Geeze, do you think they are trying to tell us something.
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