With revenue reportedly falling to lows not seen in 20 years, The Honolulu Advertiser is asking for even deeper payroll cuts, according to a union representing workers at the money-losing daily in Hawaii."Union and company negotiators met this week and made progress on a number of issues involving work rules and staffing levels," the Hawaii Newspaper and Printing Trades Council said in a recent update. "However, the company reported that its financial situation has continued to deteriorate in the past two months and announced that it is seeking drastic new across-the-board pay cuts – up to 31.5%."
The union quoted Gannett negotiator John Jaske saying that Advertiser revenue has "fallen to its lowest level in 20 years, causing the company to seek the pay cuts and another $4.5 million in other savings, including benefit and work practice changes."
The union opposes these new company proposals.
[Image: today's front page, Newseum]
Is the Advertiser laying off also? Or are the unions preventing that? Which other Gannett papers are union?
ReplyDeleteindy is guild and proud of it! we kept gannett from forcing professional journalists to be advertorial-writing flaks in our "spare" time.
ReplyDeletewe've won two contracts from gannett since being sold out by the pulliam/quayle clan in y2k, and will begin bargaining for the next one soon.
we're also taking them to arbitration over not following the contract on the august round of layoffs. the upcoming one is likely to lead to grievances and arbitration too.
colleagues who've worked at other gannett papers say it's much better in indy because of the union. we don't work unpaid o.t., for one thing.
Lord! You mean Jaske still is GCI's labor negotiator? That guy came to our site 'way back in the 1970s to threaten newsroom employees when a union vote was scheduled. He is -- or at least he was then -- a crude, thuggish goon. I wonder if he's mellowed any over the years. Probably not.
ReplyDeleteYep! Let's keep those union salaries and benefits high until the end, when the company goes under and everyone loses their jobs.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I work in I.T., so getting a new job will take me about a week, while you whiny journalists "protected" by the union get screwed.
The newsroom staff was always the most infantile, whiny, unwilling to learn place in the entire building. I even had to show folks on more than one occasion how to forward an email to other people.
Their absolute refusal to learn anything new dragged so many things down...
So when I get laid off and I enjoy my 10+ weeks of double salary (Gannett plus wherever I end up in my new job), you poor slobs will still be whining because you refused to learn stuff that my 5 year old knows.
Hey 9:34pm-
ReplyDeleteAre you the inspiration for that old SNL sketch about the IT cretin?
And a Happy Thanksgiving to you!
Our union employees get two weeks severance. Period. Been here four months or forty years, that's what you get.
ReplyDeleteIn the last contract go-round, we had already had some layoffs where this was the outcome. The local leadership didn't ask for ANYTHING to be changed, aside from asking to add the 401(k).
Unions are useless, unless you've been here a long time and you're no good at your job.
Signed, an unwilling, and ungrateful, CWA member.
"Lord! You mean Jaske still is GCI's labor negotiator?"
ReplyDeleteDude! They brought him out of deep freeze for this one.
And NO the union has not prevented the layoffs of more than 80 and the 'Senority' rule was not followed