Unionized Sacramento Bee workers are negotiating with parent McClatchy Newspapers over concessions that include reducing severance pay from a maximum of 40 weeks to 26, the Sacramento News & Review says.
“Among the other concessions that the company is seeking are the unlimited use of part-time and freelance workers, and the ability to assign Bee employees to do work for other McClatchy newspapers and Web sites,” the SN&R says.
“Guild representatives say the new severance rules would make it $10,000-$20,000 cheaper to lay off some veteran employees. Although Bee workers that SN&R spoke with are hopeful that major layoffs are, for now, in the past, the severance proposal has been troubling news,” the newspaper says.
Non-unionized McClatchy workers who have been laid off have typically received a maximum of 26 weeks pay as severance.
“[D]espite [CEO Gary] Pruitt’s cheerful report last week, McClatchy still plans to cut costs companywide by more than 20 percent in 2010. According to Editor & Publisher magazine (which, in another sign of the times, went out of business last week), McClatchy wants to outsource more of its production and share more editorial content between newspapers.”
Tags: job cuts, severance pay, unions
Gary Pruitt doesn’t have any credibility.