Tuesday, November 8, 2011

A look back at one round of cuts at the FJ

This former FJ boss outlines the awful choices he had to make in "downsizing" at his former employer.

This is Part I, I'll link to part 2 when it is available.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was a Circulation DM & later a Mailroom/Distribution foreman with the Bay City Times/Saginaw News/Valley Publishing so I read this post with a good deal of informed interest.

A) They asked this blogs author in 2008 to plan a 2 or 3 day week cutdown in publication and staff. I would guess that in between that time and the actual moment of coming clean with the employees (recall they LIED to us and said the early leaked reports were totally false) that they twice re-issued our lifetime job pledges kknowing ffull well they had already planned to shirk the responsibility and hide behind legal double talk.

That was something I am sure this same author was critical of in the opinion page of the Jounal when it was done by others

B) I don't know about Flint but in Bay City and Saginaw we had several meetings at our request to point out ways to trim waste, redundancy, and be more efficent. EVERY SINGLE SUGGESTION WAS IGNORED.

The arrogant. self important egos thought they knew the jobs we did better than we did and as much told us that with their words and deeds and in the process ignored the opportunity to save tens of thousands of dollars a month.

C) Perhaps the upper most level of management you spoke so glowingly of was different than what was in place in Bay City & Saginaw but here the inconsistent, and ineffectual leadership deserves only contempt.

D) Ownership was comfotable demanding accountability of middle and lower management but upper management continually was allowed to pass the buck, find scape goats, make lame excuses, and continue to make the same errors in new ways.

I LOVED working for the newspaper. It filled me with great pride to be a part of the essential fourth estate of our poltical system but I find my many good memories and pride corrupted by the bitterness I feel at my (& my famlies) betrayal by people I trusted.

12 November, 2011 13:51

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