Sunday, September 07, 2008
Sunday | Sept. 7 | Got news, or a question?
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14 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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ReplyDeleteGreat news, striking workers shut down Boeing. Maybe if they are all greedy enough, the company will go broke and we can buy all of our airplanes overseas too.
ReplyDeleteAny American that has lived or extensively traveled abroad, such as myself,will tell you that we are spoiled, soo much so that it is sickening. We have more than any people on earth, yet we want even more.
Tell me that these workers get paid peanuts, but they want more. At a time when foreign competition from companies like airbus have companies like boeing fighting for their lives, we, the good old american worker again step up and say we want more.
Every empire falls, because of our greed, we are getting there fast.
Remember "local, local, local?"
ReplyDeleteThe trial run at an outside Gannett newspaper seems to be a failure.
This from Newspaperdeathwatch.com
The New York Sun, which was launched in the shadow of 9/11 with the mission of providing a politically conservative alternative to The New York Times, is on its last legs. An eloquent column by Editor Seth Lipsky says the Sun, which is published on weekdays, will have to shut down at the end of this month if the owners can’t find financial backing. Interestingly, the Sun tried to compete with the worldly Times by being hyper-local, a strategy that is sometimes cited as the salvation of the newspaper industry.
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ReplyDeleteThe Arizona Republic is shedding 27 newsroom employees on top of 35 pressroom workers laid off earlier this month. Gannett Blog claims the paper has 2,700 employees, which makes these reductions a drop in the bucket compared to the typical industry cutbacks of about 10% of the workforce. Blog visitors say the mood at the Republic is horrible. “Morale here is so low people who weren’t offered buyouts congratulated those who took them,” writes one.
This is so sad........
RE: OVERTIME
ReplyDeleteI'm just a blue collar grunt, who has been told over the years to fill out 37.5 hours per week, every two weeks on my time-sheet(EVEN if I worked 55 hours). According to strick U.S. & state guidelines I am NOT Exempt from Overtime. I can't hire/fire, more than 20% of my work is repeatative, etc. Over the years (an to this day) I work more than 37.5 hours a week. I have taken pride in helping my local unit function. The problem arises from when the upper echelons EXPECT EXTRA TIME for FREE. To that I say this. Mr. Dubow makes roughly $144,250 PER WEEK (200 TIMES my pay......as a stockholder, my performance rating recomendation would be take at least a 50% pay cut immediately. This would go far to build some sense of "We're in this together," as opposed to the "Let the peasant eat cake while we don't suffer." As far as me donating beyond a few hours a week of FREE WORK TIME, well let me put it this way.....I'm a prostitute, not a whore, you want me, you gotta pay for me....because I'm worth it.
dear 10 a.m. re boeing, Who died and made you ruler of the wage-hour universe?
ReplyDeletefrom nyt: Talks broke down over a variety of issues, including pay, pensions and job security, a key point for the machinists, who have watched Boeing send work on its planes to other companies in the United States and overseas.
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So just because workers want something that makes them greedy? It's not any "greedier" than the company trying to make as much as it can to enhance shareholder wealth by trying to keep its labor costs down, just like Gannett, trying to cut labor costs and other expenses by ousting through "voluntary buyouts" and involuntary layoffs higher-paid employees just trying to eke out a decent living by giving their all to their employers, who may not seem appreciative.
Companies lured us to work for them by offering us promises, and in the case of union workers, contracts, of certain levels of pay and benefits. That wasn't worker greed, that was Gannett and Boeing trying to make their operations a place where people wanted to work. They were largely labor-market decisions.
Unions like at Boeing get to renegotiate the contracts, it's their right. Most of us non-union Gannett newsroom employees pretty much just have to take what the company bosses say they must do to keep the company going. And, in this world, that's the bosses' rights, too, within certain wage-hour-wrongful-termination and many other laws.
Many posters seem to forget the company's bosses' No. 1 priority, enhancing shareholder wealth.
And many bosses seem to forget they do this on the backs of may loyal workers.
1:31 "RE: OVERTIME
ReplyDeleteI'm just a blue collar grunt, who has been told over the years to fill out 37.5 hours per week, every two weeks on my time-sheet(EVEN if I worked 55 hours)."
Well said for most of us in the newsrooms, too! My bosses aren't even the least bit grateful for the free overtime and giving up all our breaks, even lunch, every day. My boss just asks why I didn't get more work done, work that used to be done by better paid people who were bought out or laid off.
In the past, our reward was at least a product we could be proud of, but now our newsroom is so short-staffed that those left couldn't put out a print and online paper to be proud of if we all worked 24/7 without even a nap. So, why bother?
I used to be proud of what I did and where I worked.
ReplyDeleteNo more.
9/07/2008 3:15 PM said: I used to be proud of what I did and where I worked.
ReplyDeleteNo more.
I second that! I used to be very proud of my job at my NJ paper. Not anymore! When people ask what I do, I tell them and I love what I do; but I always end the subject that I hate my company. If they ask why I tell why, whom and where. Sometimes they ask who is Gannett! I tell them you know USA Today? Oh, they say. I think I get a better response if I said I worked at Walmart! ;) If things continue as they have, I will be by year's end. At least I would get a employee discount! Do they give employee discounts at Walmart? :0
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ReplyDeleteOMFG! I just got really depressed and really upset at his (Dubow's) salary. It's one thing to see it as "$7.5 million" its another to see it in a weekly paycheck order. It makes you compare it to your own life. I couldn't even fathom making that much money.
ReplyDeleteI see all of these decent, honest people struggling and doing their damnedest not to get put on the copping block, and for what? So Craig Dubow can get a big fat paycheck while running a company into the ground?
Here's a new shirt for you Jim --
"Craig Dubow makes $3,606.25/hr and all I got was laid off!"
It was worse when McCorkindale was CEO and the stock was worth something. One year with his options sales he booked $25mill
ReplyDeleteBesides money, seems Dubow gets at least one other important benefit.
ReplyDeleteNamely, the guy doesn't have to regularly see his name attached to the kind of mediocre photos or stories that get communities buzzing with questions and criticism.
Former Detroit Free Press reporter Joel Thurtell spells out how Gannett forces papers to "redline" -- pick and choose what communities its reporters are to cover. He details what communities he was told to avoid because they were too poor and wouldn't generate ads. He also tweaks the Freep for excessive celebrating after the mayor's ouster.
ReplyDeletehttp://joelontheroad.com/