Proposal in Akron: 17 percent pay cut

Look at it objectively.

When you contract to have work done around your house, you usually hire the lowest bidder, all else being equal.

A newspaper can make paycuts like this without worrying about losing quality people, because there are more than enough quality people looking for work.

So why shouldn't they do it?

 

If there were hundreds of newspapers out there for every applicant, instead of the other way around, I'd make every publisher get on their hands and knees and bark like a dog once for every $1,000/year they intended to offer me. And I'd want to hear a lot of barks.

 

You are not going to keep, retain or recruit quality people when they know they are working for or are potentially considering working for the journalistic pay equivalent of a bait-and-switch.

You don't treat people that way ... period. Forget about the fact that it's morally wrong, it is exceedingly bad business.

 

My sympathies to the folks in Akron. I just took a 10 percent pay cut. I can assure you it's been a total bitch. The day we got our first checks after that was just an awful day. ..and hearing some people trying to be all bright and cheerful by saying stuff like "Well, at least we still have jobs'' didn't make it any better. Sometimes, it's OK to bitch and moan and say this is wrong. . .

 

I never said they shouldn't do it. But they shouldn't come out and say something like that. As Bubbler said, you just don't treat people like that.

 

Apparently they laid off all the copy editors already.
"They just doesn't want to?"

 

I "fired" Orkin pest control and hired someone to do the job for $33/month instead of $47.

I gave my lawn service a furlough. Instead of cutting the grass every 10 days, they come every 21 days.

As for what the company said, it's incredible they said it.

But you mock the doublespeak that the other 99.9% of newspaper execs use when they cut pay and/or staff. We all know in the salad days of our industry our papers could have paid us more . . . but they didn't want to.

 

... with a pitchfork

 

Karen and David can lick my smurf and go smurf themselves. Bunch of smurfing smurfs.

 

That's drastic...shut the doors kind of cuts.

 

How many of you have read the entire 19-point proposal?
It would seem the guild could come back and say that 12 or 13 of the issues can be readily accepted. Five or six are negotiable. The 17% pay cut is an absolute NO.

 

Proposal 20. Your balls: Hand them over.