Wednesday, March 18, 2009

What about layoffs and furloughs and demotions at corporate?

McClatchy has announced it will lay off 15% of its workforce and reduce wages for most of the employees who remain. In addition, many employees will be subject to unpaid furloughs. But what about the corporate office?

So far McClatchy has made no announcement about layoffs or unpaid furloughs at the corporate office or the DC bureau, beyond reducing Gary Pruitt's salary ($1.1 million in 2007) by 15%, and other executive salaries by 10%.

I'm keeping track of the announced layoffs at McClatchy, and just added DC bureau and the corporate office to the list. Click here to see the list.

Yesterday I emailed Elaine Lintecum and Peter Tira to ask if there will be layoffs or demotions or unpaid furloughs at the corporate office or the DC bureau. Lintecum and Tira are the official media contacts at at McClatchy.

Their response?

Nothing.
.
.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

There have been no "lay-off's" in our department, but through outsourcing and attrition, we've gone from 12.5 to 4. Keep in mind that they're shifting a lot of the admin work that was done locally to corporate.

Anonymous said...

Not that I'm defending McClatchy, but seriously, who would talk to you?

Anonymous said...

A company that cares about repairing its image would at least comment.

Whatever employees are left at any McClatchy paper have to be concerned that the whole thing will collapse any day. Those who got buyouts should feel fortunate to get off the ship while they're still loading the lifeboats. Whoever is left on board is going down with the ship, I'm afraid, because the company won't be able to afford buyouts when it goes bankrupt.

Anonymous said...

Not that I'm defending McClatchy, but seriously, who would talk to you?


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Funny. That is exactly what we say to the KC Star when they call.

Anonymous said...

The word is suposed to come out Monday at Charlotte,a profitable paper, is looking at an ugly senario.Paycuts are def. and furloughs are most likely,1 in the fist half of the year and possibly 1 in the last half.It's not going to be pretty according to one supervisor.Bad thing for myself is I'm way too young to take a buyout and no where else in the region pays the salary I make.So I guess I'll have to hope and pray someone will come in and buy the paper or hope McClatchy doesn't make it go belly up and leave me with nothing. Who Knows.....

Anonymous said...

Corp outsourced the tax dept. last year as well as a number of people from another group. And it's pretty small, overall. That's not to say they won't make more cuts...my guess is corp goes last, after all the papers.

Anonymous said...

I just left Sac Bee on my own last week for a state job. I wasn't eligible for severance and all I left with was vacation pay. Before I left, I talked to a gal in Corporate and she said that after all the layoffs, paycuts, etc. are made, they will see where they are financially to determine if the Corporate folks even need to be included. How unfair is that?

Anonymous said...

Not that I'm defending McClatchy, but seriously, who would talk to you?

***

That would be a TERRIBLE stance for a newspaper to take.

The Star has been brutal with Mayor Mark Funkhouser, even going so far as to retract their endorsement.

Do you think the newspaper would find it acceptable if he just decided not to talk to them because they had been mean to him?

Anonymous said...

8:05, that's not a good comparison. A mayor is obligated to answer to the press, a company is not obligated to discuss upcoming personnel changes with a blogger. Especially one whose aim is to expose that company's foibles.

And believe me, I am not on the side of McClatchy as a rule.

Anonymous said...

I've never taken the stance that anyone -- even elected officials -- has to talk to my paper. But it's certainly smart of them to. They do it because newspapers allow them to get their side out to a large number of people. And because if they don't, they'll look like crap in their community's main forum for debate.

But a blog has no institutional heft. No one knows what any blog in particular stands for, or whether the blogger has an agenda, or whether the blog has three readers or a few hundred. Bloggers are generally amateurs who don't know how to get sources to talk, don't have all day to work the phone or jump out of a bush, and have no leverage to make them talk.

It's easy to stiff a blogger, and there's not much downside. The decline of newspapers means corporations and politicians won't be held accountable for their acts.

Case in point here.

Anonymous said...

Right, even the big name bloggers don't have a lot of credibility.

Someone described McClatchy as "hidebound" the other day and that is a fact. Some may think the newfangled interwebs are a series of tubes, like Sen. Ted Stevens once explained.