By: Joe Strupp Just hours after McClatchy announced its second major job-cutting plan in three months, the Lexington (Ky.) Newspaper Guild took aim at the company with an attack that criticizes CEO Gary Pruitt's annual bonus and the company?s corporate jet, while Howard Weaver, McClatchy's vice president for news, urged workers on his blog to "keep the faith" through tough times.
Although it notes the $23 million airplane was recently grounded, the union that represents 86 staffers at the Lexington Herald-Leader contends executives should have done without the air transport more than a year ago.
"As McClatchy was making its employees bleed to pay off crushing debt incurred by corporate decisions, McClatchy executives were jet-setting in luxury," the guild said in a statement, which also includes what the union claims is a record of the jet's travel. "From April 16 to Aug. 5, the jet was flown 30 times, according to flightaware.com. Many of the destinations were only a one- or two-hour drive away."
The Herald-Leader union, which said 22 Lexington employees would be laid-off -- including eight union members -- sent the release a day after McClatchy announced it would cut 1,150 jobs companywide. That announcement followed a previous June decision to lop off 1,400 workers.
"In the last nine months, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader journalists and employees have endured a wage freeze, seen their health insurance premiums skyrocket and had their short-term disability benefits gutted by 40 percent," the union added. "Yet McClatchy's corporate headquarters has been spared the brunt of cost cutting. In fact, McClatchy has added to its corporate bureaucracy. And not long ago CEO Gary Pruitt was even awarded an $800,000 performance bonus as the company's stock tanked.
"Even when considering the wage freeze implemented for executives, corporate compensation is still excessive." It later added, "We find it deeply disturbing that the company looked to push loyal employees into the unemployment line before it forced its overpaid executives to sit in an hour or two of traffic."
Weaver, who has gained praise for his candid blog, Etaoin Shrdlu, wrote Tuesday that "we believed the painful cuts made earlier would see us through the sharp revenue declines we?re experiencing, but conditions continued to get worse.
"It can be hard to keep the faith through times like these. Nobody suffers as much as people who lose their jobs, of course, but those who remain at work suffer too. Staffers are working harder, with fewer colleagues and less certainty. Pay has been frozen for a year. There are worries about whether the company has a plan to get through this transition and regain a stable footing. Are people making a mistake for sticking with us?"
Later, however, he seeks a positive outlook, writing: "Upon that foundation we are building a new structure that reflects the realities of today's media environment. A great deal of impressive change has already occurred, though it has been masked and obscured by the pall of the revenue declines. We truly are reinventing what kind of enterprise we are, transforming a newspaper company into a hybrid, multimedia information source."
The entire entry can be found at:
http://editor.blogspot.com/2008/09/painful-path-to-
productive-future.html
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here