Gannett - 1st quarter furloughs

And, my apologies to the folks at Gannett who will suffer. The furlough days suck. Particularly for the people who already aren't making much to begin with.

Does anyone know if it was a company wide mandate? A lot of the other places, CNHI included, thrust them solely on the employees working in the editorial sector.

 

Sorry to hear about this–again. I miss daily journalism, but not this.

 

This is the verge of my two year anniversary of being laid off by USA TODAY. Just remember, that came after two furlough weeks in 2009. There's no guarantee they won't cut jobs at the end of 2012, either. Don't think the furlough means everyone takes the burden to prevent future layoffs, since that's never true.

 

But the point is, these companies have designed the furlough programs so that taxpayers subsidize their cheap-ass ways. You aren't really laid-off for economic reasons, you're just temporarily not paid to pad the corporate bottom line. Yet a system designed for the truly jobless gets strained -- and, as a result, taxpayer money that could be better spent gets siphoned off -- because Craig Dubow gets filthy rich on his employees' backs and the Gannett board is fine with that.

Just because a company pays into the system doesn't mean it's OK to exploit it. That's like insurance fraud, saying "I paid the premiums so I'm going to claim my wife lost that diamond ring and collect on it."

If someone is truly is laid off, I'm all for them getting unemployment. If someone is furloughed, the person isn't wrong to apply necessarily but the company is WAY wrong for gaming the system. The feds ought to swoop in, frankly.

 

It's interesting that the furloughs haven't resulted in more folks simply getting disgusted and quitting.

Four months after our last furloughs, about 30 percent of our newsroom had quit.

 

If there's a flaw in this reasoning, I'd like to hear about it.

 

Indy peeps say no furlough for Guild members. Not sure what percentage of newsroom that protects.

 

Here's a flaw: I pay taxes. I get furloughed. I'm entitled to get some of my taxes back in the form of unemployment. Why should my money only go to people who you deem are "really laid off"?

 

Sadly, this is the absolute truth.

 

That happens, too. But the current state of the industry is such that the mess is so widespread, you may well end up jumping from one pile of manure into another (as was the case with me).

 

There is also an exemption for people whose salary/wage falls below a certain amount. Might vary with each operation.