Two notes over the past week hint at a dicey situation new Publisher Arnold Garson may now be facing since becoming The Courier-Journal's chief executive in August. The writers -- including one who says he's a local union officer -- describe problems with press maintenance, heavy newsprint waste, and loss of commercial printing jobs at the paper, which has one of Gannett's newer print operations."We've heard Louisville is close to losing a commercial job,'' Anonymous@7:29 a.m. said in Monday's edition of Real Time Comments. "Anybody know? Ad sales people going bananas here."
That followed an e-mail from a Mike Heine, who says he's a Louisville pressman, and an officer of GCC/IBT Local 619M; Heine's been with the paper 10 years. "Here in L’ville,'' he writes, "we have an $85 million facility that is crumbling. We've seen the page counts, and press runs go down for some time now. Lost 30 thousand in 10 months. If we are to keep our jobs, we need commercial work, and lots of it. Problem is, nobody in newspaper world is real good at commercial planning."
Heine says part of the problem stems from a showdown the union had with human resources chief Randi Austin. "Preventive maintenance is a must, but we don’t have manpower. Company illegally laid off two press operators last winter; during grievance meeting, Randi Austin told us it was not our job to tell them when to do maintenance, but that they would tell us when we could."
Garson has a history of run-ins with unions, my readers have told me. I wonder if this is why he was sent to replace Denise Ivey after the Friday Afternoon Massacre?
Earlier: New Louisville pub's age raises tenure questions
[Image: today's front page, Newseum]
If the union doesn't get its way, would it picket the C-J? Would it try to shut down the paper?
ReplyDelete12:49
ReplyDeleteI think you missed the point.
We are trying to save jobs, and current management is running customers off.
Ask Skip Cobb. He is an old commercial pressman. These presses require regular maintainence, and it's not being done. The KBA installer told me that at current state our press will be lucky to last 5 more years.
We are already cannibalizing parts, and continually miss deadlines because you have to stop to work on units in order to sell the product. The other day, with Skip as a witness, it took 25,000 spoils before a paper could be sold. And, we didn't sell them. It was a re-run for LEO of only 1,000 papers.
"If the Union doesn't get it's way", there will be no revenue to replace lost circulation. We've lost over 30K in last year alone.
In short, "if the Union doesn't get it's way", makes no sense! we even went in to negotiate an afternoon shift to save the company over $50k in overtime a year. We want this place running 24/7, not shut down. Current management is doing it's part to "shut down the paper".
Bring us management with skills other than crossing a picket line.
Respectfully,
Michael L. Heine
I did miss the point, Michael. It was a poor choice of words on my part, and I am sorry for using them.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder though what the union's options are if management doesn't make concessions on these issues.
Non-union employees basically have two options available to them when they don't like what the company is doing: 1. find another job or 2. suck it up and do the job they currently have, with all of the extra responsibilities gradually being put upon them by management, dealing in their own way with the consequences of lost advertising revenue, press breakdowns, and whatever other madness comes their way.
I cannot fathom pouring $85 MILLION into a press that will be "lucky to last 5 more years" as Michael Heine puts it.
ReplyDeleteI cannot fathom Randi Austin, who probably knows nothing about how printing presses actually work, telling those who DO know when they can and can't do maintenance.
It's like the vice-regent telling Steve Kragthorpe when his team can and can't practice, and make sure you don't use the football facility for more than 20 hours a week, because we have a campus-wide green intitiative to save mone----errrrrrrr, the environment.
We keep going in and doing our job.
ReplyDeleteThe company reserves the right to mis-manage.
But , I will not quietly stand by and watch this group destroy my father's trade. Everyone will know that it was not the Union that destroyed our jobs.
At some point, somebody will see the light and understand that we can bring in a lot of money for the C-J. A lot of money.
Gannett's higher-ups know all there is to know about everything. Seems they know readers better than readers know themsleves.
ReplyDeleteThe "won't last five years" came from the senior installer for Koenig&Bauer, the company the press came from. And that was a little over a year ago.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought…but, if Garson really is that disinterested, is it possible that a third party or something with Indy or Cincy is in the works? The latter shut its weekly plant last year by shipping 27 weekly papers to Lafayete and its sizeable commercial work to Richmond. Plus, Cincy’s plant is limited and under-utilized now that the Post is gone.
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