'Black Wednesday' in Tampa

Tampa's Media General. But the premise is the same.

 

This sure smells of a company trying to erase two people who were going to need additional health benefits post haste. Utter bullshit.

I'm not saying the only people that should be let go are those without families, by any means. But to blindside two writers, both of whom, by every account on here and elsewhere, have done excellent work -- then to learn that both these guys just had their spouses give birth? Ugh. It makes this look like even dirtier pool than it already was.

If Media General is going so far as to look at employees' benefits packages as a way to determine who gets the boot, that is completely fucked up. But based on what I've read here and on the "lovely and talented's" site, it wouldn't really surprise me.

 

Please don't take this the wrong way ...

I understand that some of you are very angry and simply lashing out at heartless companies who have done harm to people you care about. But let's be realistic here: people with families get many, many benefits in this business, and otherwise. They more often get the opportunities to take holidays off, while young and/or single people work those days instead. They generally take more vacation so as to spend that time with said families, and so on and so forth.

That in no way condones how this company treated the Carters, regardless of what the truth was in terms of why they were laid off. And it in no way condones any company making the despicable decision to lay off somebody because they were about to need more benefits, etc., etc.

But just because one employee has a family does not make it any more "fucked up" that he got laid off than any other employee. And I would hope that, when emotions aren't so high, some here might acknowledge that.

 

Buck:
Respectfully disagree with your point about families.
As a single guy, I worked the desk early in my career. Didn't really give a crap about working holidays, weekends because I was a single guy.
As a family guy and a writer, the burden of breaking stories, deadlines, 14-hour days and travel is a heavy one. Big game on the son's birthday? Schedule around it. His sports events on Saturday, the day when your beat has its big games? Find out about it via phone calls.
The bottom line, single or married: Newspapering can be a tough business for your social and mental health. It's different than GM or American Airlines or any other company/business. If the Suited Fucks who run papers had clues or souls, maybe they'd have a shred of compassion/guilt.
(Waiting for monkeys to fly out of my butt.)

 

Take a closer look at the paper name, Lolly. But you're right, it's like lather, rinse and repeat these days.

 

Laying off family people and laying off single people sucks, either way.

If the bean-counters start subjectively targeting their highly compensated decision-making skills on their workers to assess which ones are more "able to weather" a job loss, they will have taken their ineptitude to a new low. You can just imagine some of the boardroom debate:

"This guy has two kids, one of whom gets sick a lot, and a third on the way -- that taps into our health benefits."

"Wait, that woman has a spouse who makes $150K a year as a broker -- she doesn't really need this job."

"Hold on, that old guy is, well, old -- he's been around for a few cost-of-living raises that have compounded. Enough of that!"

"Got a single gal over here -- dumping her won't create a hardship for a family."

"Not so fast -- single folks work holidays and nights with fewer gripes than married folks. Cut this divorced mother of two with the pain-in-the-ass schedule conflicts instead."

What is really troubling about any non-performance factors in determining job losses is the likelihood that some immediate supervisors, or at least their immediate supervisors, signed off on it or maybe even initiated it. It's highly unlikely that the suits at the highest levels pay attention to who has families, who has newborns and so on. That makes the atmosphere a lot chillier, that a manager who asks you to bust your ass on a daily basis is serving you up on a silver platter to the ax wielders.

Any non-performance factors are simply wrong, including family status, spousal income, rainy-day savings accounts, age and even the roles in which people currently are working in good faith (usually assigned them by the bosses anyway). If people are eligible for early retirement benefits and you want to credit them for whatever they'd get at full retirement, fine. If someone is a slacker and needs to go on merit, fine. Otherwise, it ought to be reverse seniority, last in, first out. Period.

Anything short of a cut-and-dried, objective system like that, they're asking for a complete lack of trust in the workplace and future mutinies. And the fact is, a LIFO system appropriately puts some of the pain on the current bosses, too, who are more likely to have hired the most recent additions to staff. It's too easy to just dump someone else's hire from 13 years ago.

 

If companies are targeting layoffs based on age, race, family situation, you have the makings of a pretty good lawsuit and at the very least a complaint to the EEOC. And those people love to play hardball with media owners.

 

Let me clarify what I said a few posts above. I don't want any of these people losing their jobs -- single, married, old, young, etc., and I don't think you target employees with families anymore than you would employees who don't have families. I'm in line with Joe's thoughts:

I'm just saying the Tampa situation seems awfully strange. Two very good writers, neither apparently expecting this in any way, both with newborns. Is it all a coincidence? I'm not prepared to give MG the benefit of the doubt, based on what I've learned here and elsewhere the past couple of weeks.

 

I have no doubt when combined with the other 5,000 people who have lost/are losing their jobs . . . you'll find it is indeed a coincidence.

A coin can come up heads 6 times in a row. Flip it 5,000 more times, and then tell me if something is amiss.

Fact is, there are MANY things that may provide indications --- accurate and inaccurate --- to outsiders.

Most people would look at the money I've saved for retirement and the fact that my house is almost paid for and say, "He can weather a layoff better than most."

The tiny percentage who know my personal situation know a layoff would be catastrophic.

Please do not be so quick to make harsh judgments. All layoffs are bad. But no one is going around twisting a knife to make them worse for targeted people on purpose.

 

BTE and Mizzou, those are excellent points I didn't fully consider. Points well-taken, and these guys still got exceptionally fucked, but many others were surely treated likewise in some form or fashion, regardless of their economic/family situations or their ability.

My apologies to any and all for any short-sightedness in my posts.

 

And yet, I'd bet that rarely ever happens, not at the hands of journalists, anyway.

We are often loyal to a fault, and, just generally, very principled people, period.

When it comes right down to it, even when/if we are angry -- even enraged, as the case may be -- we wouldn't sue our places of employment. Because, the fact is, we really care about our papers/web sites, and the people with whom we work.

It's just our nature, and the all-consuming nature of the business, combining to contribute to a distaste, and an unlikelihood of turning on something -- and I mean really turning, on something -- that we, at least, have always taken to heart and considered our own.

It is part of how/why we sometimes get taken advantage of, and/or screwed around with, in the first place.

And besides, in spite of everything, we might still like to work in the business again, too.

A lawsuit is the kind of thing you do only when you're really, without a doubt, ready and willing to burn all bridges.