One of Gannett's 8,100 Newsquest employees writes about the loss of advertising-production jobs under Gannett's contract with 2AdPro of Los Angeles. As in the United States, 2AdPro produces advertising artwork at a fraction of the cost of U.S. and UK workers, by shipping that work to India. "It's one thing when there is no work and you need to make people redundant but when they give your jobs to people in another country -- well, that just about takes the biscuit!" the reader told me in an e-mail this morning. "We have enough immigrants coming here, without our jobs being given away to them while they are still in their motherland. I gather this is happening throughout the UK with Gannett -- soon there will be no ad design jobs available here at all at this rate."Read the e-mail in full -- then join the debate, in the comments section, below.
At the request of a Newsquest employee, I'm posting the following e-mail, which I received today:
ReplyDelete"I work in an Ad Design Dept in the south of the UK and we are in a 30 day consultation period with Newsquest (Gannett UK) over the proposed redundancies of all but 3 of our dept, and the same is happening to a similar amount of staff on another site in the south. All work is going to India with Ad2Pro. Now there's a surprise!
"It's one thing when there is no work and you need to make people redundant but when they give your jobs to people in another country -- well, that just about takes the biscuit!
"We have enough immigrants coming here, without our jobs being given away to them while they are still in their motherland.
"I gather this is happening throughout the UK with Gannett -- soon there will be no ad design jobs available here at all at this rate.
"I’ve seen some of the work Ad2Pro have started to supply our newspaper and to be frank, a monkey could do better – and as they are paying them peanuts – I guess that’s what they will get!
And of course, getting rid of us is really going to help the final salary pension scheme we have here. Get rid of all of us, and there will less people to support – yet more money for Gannett.
"Are there other people in the UK going through this at the moment? I would like to know just how many of us are going to shafted by Gannett/Newsquest."
What happened to Gannett's emphasis on local, local, local!?
ReplyDeleteThat shouldn't be just for the Information Center. It should be true of ALL departments, especially if you want complete support and buy-in by employees.
Hey Jim
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to the other comments in reference to outsourcing? The were in regard to Binghamton and the Asbury Park Press. They were attached to an article a couple of days ago but now are nowhere to be found.
I can't tell you how many stories I've seen in the last year about outsourced ad production jobs. It's going on everywhere.
ReplyDeleteHere in Minneapolis, the Star Tribune outsourced a big chunk of its ad production within the last year, and if memory serves, so did the Pioneer Press.
If anything, Gannett might be slightly behind the curve on this.
I read a story, in Presstime I believe, about three years ago. In it the author took Newspaper Companies to task.
ReplyDeleteHis beef? His premise was that newspapers should do what they do best, news and advertising. Everything else, everything, should be outsourced to people who do it better.
So, if anything, Gannett is behind that 8-ball.
Of course, outsourcing didn't save KRI or Tribune, to the extent they did it. but that might actually make the case better.
I have a suggestion for Gannett. Let's outsource all the accounting and finance functions to a 3rd world country as a cost cutting measure! Who needs high priced US labor to look at accounting and financial information on the computer? I can see the bean counters now scurrying about trying to explain why it can't be done by wire! Fact is that it can..but now it hits too close to home.
ReplyDeleteThis underscores a fundamental problem with Gannett. The money side of the business dictating what the product side should be. Remember back in the 70's a brewer changed his beer formula to save money. People stopped drinking that product, because they didn't like the change. At the time, they were the leading brewer in the world. After that, they barely survived. Will Gannett executives learn that the product needs to come first, and then the profits will follow? Seems doubtful.
Go! Go! Go! Go!
ReplyDelete