In its plan to sell The Honolulu Advertiser, Gannett is giving up 410 full-time and 190 part-time employees to a new owner: Canadian David Black. He's expected to merge the Advertiser with his Honolulu Star-Bulletin, combining the two staffs into one. It's unclear how many employees will survive any cuts.
The loss of those Gannett employees isn't a layoff, but the outcome is the same: Once the deal is done, company-wide employment drops nearly 2%, based on the company's newly disclosed total of 35,000 worldwide workers. That total was down 16% from 2008, and was likely the single biggest decline in Gannett's 104-year history.
Friday, February 26, 2010
3 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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Well, not exactly. These employees were making a profit in their enterprise (Gannett confirmed that in the Advertiser's own piece on the sale), and with the entire enterprise gone so is the go-forward profit. Tho perhaps they were not making more of a percentage profit than the debt service on the same sum as the sales price.
ReplyDeleteHearst is another company that doesn't have to report to Wall St, not even the TV side anymore (since they bought out the old Argyle piece of Hearst-Argyle). But I've heard there is a messy divorce going on that might make substantial new investements unlikely right now.
I can't see Gannett selling off the Broadcast division entirely, however much they might like that cash (and however much the TV stations would love to get out from under the thumb of what they perceive as primarily a newspaper company). But maybe a station or two. . .
this could be grim in the islands. . . with the sale of the star-bulletin and the acquisition of the advertier, the advertiser's union contract is finished. . . the s-b's contract with the union expires on march 14. . . this could set up a "reverse" bidding war for folks who will work for less to remain in honolulu. . . latest rumor: 25 out of 120 from the advertiser newsroom will survive the process (when the contracts at both are done, then no seniority, no defined salary scale, etc.)
ReplyDeleteThat always happen. They do that to balance the system for payroll. Colorado newspapers did that several times and had in-house agreements to protect the employers. They did popular steps to secure the inner economy of two companies merging as one, one example is by putting salary accounts into outsourcing payroll services to pave way and save man power capability. Surprisingly, they became more successful than their previous months.
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