From Todd Heywood's story today in The Michigan Messenger:
Barbara Weiland stopped at the Occupy Lansing encampment in Reutter Park yesterday morning to drop off knitted hats and scarves she had made. She ended up taking up a sign and marching with a small contingent to the downtown Lansing Bank of America branch where the group protested the bank’s bailout money and foreclosure practices.
Weiland, 39, is a former reporter for the Lansing State Journal. She was laid off in June along with 700 others across the Gannett News system. It was the latest in a continuing process of scaling down by the news giant designed to strengthen faltering stock price returns. Weiland was called into the offices of the publisher at about 5 p.m. on June 21.
“We found out that morning that there would be 700 layoffs,” Weiland said. “I was told about 5 p.m. So they got a full day out of me.”
Weiland’s eight years of service were rewarded with eight weeks of severance pay, she says — one week for each year. But for the former reporter, what really burned was that Gannett CEO Craig Dubow retired in October, walking away with a $37.1 million retirement and disability agreement.
Barbara Weiland stopped at the Occupy Lansing encampment in Reutter Park yesterday morning to drop off knitted hats and scarves she had made. She ended up taking up a sign and marching with a small contingent to the downtown Lansing Bank of America branch where the group protested the bank’s bailout money and foreclosure practices.
“We found out that morning that there would be 700 layoffs,” Weiland said. “I was told about 5 p.m. So they got a full day out of me.”
Weiland’s eight years of service were rewarded with eight weeks of severance pay, she says — one week for each year. But for the former reporter, what really burned was that Gannett CEO Craig Dubow retired in October, walking away with a $37.1 million retirement and disability agreement.
I just read her story and it was very moving. Where are the rest of you? We should all be this brave. Aside from the CEO getting $37MM while laying off 700, the banks and mortgage companies have been completely unsympathetic.
ReplyDeleteAmerica has completely lost its heart.
What an incredibly sad story. This is so far from the American Dream. No, the American Dream today are people like Craig Dubrow, a TV guy, running America's largest newspaper companyn into the ground and getting a $37.5 million goodbye kiss. That's criminal. I don't see anything with rewarding people, but not when you take a company and tank it, layoff 40 percent of its workers, cut the salaries of the others by 1.8 percent each year with a weekly furlough, gut your product so it is little more than a shopper and put hard-working dedicated folks in the unemployment line.
ReplyDeleteThis is the killer quote, right here:
ReplyDeleteBut for the former reporter, what really burned was that Gannett CEO Craig Dubow retired in October, walking away with a $37.1 million retirement and disability agreement.
“If you divide that by 700 people, you get about $50,000 — that was my annual salary,” Weiland says.
(Me again) 700 people lost their jobs so Dubow could collect $37 million after presiding over an ongoing corporate meltdown. What is wrong with this country? How did this become acceptable?
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ReplyDeleteRegarding Dubow: It takes a special person to enrich himself like that; a person without a conscience, apparently without an inkling of feeling for others.
ReplyDeleteWhy wouldn't $21 million satisfy him? We all know the answer to that. And anyone who thinks Martore is differnt is only fooling him or herself.
G A N N E T T, the company where greed dominates.
New corporate motto:
ReplyDeleteG A N N E T T employees' salaries: It's all within the CEO's reach!
OCCUPY GANNETT NEWSPAPERS
ReplyDeleteThey're all within reach
Where were the rest of the people at Lansing? Huddled in their little hovels I suspect, gnarling their teeth and saying "yesser, yesser" Ha
ReplyDeleteI know of some of those people, especially a couple of the guys in sports..... very much snivling company guys and backstabbers from my experience with them.
Protest? Not likely.
11:41: Hardly anyone left in sports, at least full-time. BTW, a job for an "investigative reporter" was posted for Lansing, not too long after they laid off 19 people.
ReplyDelete"Where were the rest of the people at Lansing? Huddled in their little hovels I suspect, gnarling their teeth and saying "yesser, yesser" Ha"
ReplyDeleteWhere were the rest of us in Lansing? Desperately trying to hang onto our jobs, that's where. In case you hadn't noticed, not only are those of us in Michigan in an industry that's going down the toilet, we're in a STATE that's doing the same as well. The outlook is not precisely rosy, especially not with dozens of laid-off journalists having flooded the Lansing market in the last few years.
I never thought the smartest financial move I'd have ever made would be to marry someone in a field other than journalism. Guess I could have saved myself the cost of a college education :P
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ReplyDelete