Gannett Voluntary Buyouts

And if you have to stay with the company until Dec. 1 to be eligible, it's more like a month.

 

Well, I just got an email outling the VSO. So now I know all the details. I guess they sent everyone an email?

 

Our company called it a Voluntary Severance Plan. The acronym, VSP, was the same as the vision insurance plan, Vision Service Plan. Some thought they were canceling our vision insurance.

 

Apologies, I thought it was for a full year. So basically a month of health insurance. How generous.

 

These voluntary buyouts sound terrible for the employee. If you wait and get laid off/fired you get full unemployment and you get benefits for a while then can go on Cobra or get Obamacare, correct? These cheap severance packages are nothing. Just wait til they fire you and hit up the government for your relief package.

 

So what happens when they don't get enough volunteers? Is that when layoffs come into play?

 

Health insurance is paid monthly by employers to the insurance company and is for the whole month. So if you’re working there on Dec.1, Gannett has already paid your premium for that month and the insurance terminates on Dec.31 anyways.

So really, Gannett isn’t offering employees any additional health insurance than they already wouldn’t have received.

 

I would kiss a cobra before I ever spent a dime on COBRA.

 

The best (only?) good thing about Cobra, from the experience I had getting laid off, is that there is a grace period with it where you can go back and buy it retroactively.

A little fuzzy on the details, but for discussion, say it's a 90-day grace period. You can go without it for 80 days, then if you find a lump somewhere there shouldn't be, you can say you want it, pay the premiums for the previous 80 days and you have coverage. Horribly expensive and I think you're better off getting a catastrophic policy from an independent agent, but this is at least one saving grace.

 

We went on Cobra for a handful of months between the end of my buyout and the start of Medicare (long story, the hell with at-the-time-it-was-called-Tronc). Expensive as hell, too, and we had to get an attorney involved with our appeal, but at least it was coverage until we got the Medicare situation worked out.

 

There isn't an "enough" for the beast here, unfortunately. They're basically signifying that more layoffs are coming, but they just want to get a feel for how many "easy" layoffs they can make here, of essentially people who want to get out for whatever reason.

 

Not to go back to this well, but the balls and lack of shame and awareness it takes to go from furloughs during the pandemic, to "we're adding to our staffs!!!!!!" to "Take a few bucks and a month of health insurance, and please go away" is so purely and aggressively on-brand for Gannett. It's pretty awe-inspiring.