The newspaper business, as you might have heard, is swirling the commode these days. Declining demand for advertising and Mary Worth cartoons has meant lower revenues, all of which affects the folks who write the words you ignore each day.
So yes, drastic times call for drastic measures. In 2009, workers in the Plain Dealer newsroom agreed to a 12 percent pay cut in exchange for a no-layoff guarantee from the bosses.
With that two-year contract set to run out at the end of this year, the battle will be joined yet again. Management’s most recent proposal was to extend the current agreement another two years.
This time the union’s not biting.
“Our membership had it tough the last two years, as we saw this company take concessions to help it through hard times. And our members were happy to do that,” says Harlan Spector, Plain Dealer wordsmith and chairman of the union.
This article appears in Oct 5-11, 2011.
And when these immature tactics fail, where will these people go? Exactly how many newspapers are in Ohio, or anywhere else for that matter? And how many of them are understaffed? Better wake up, you guys; before the union prices you right out of the market!
This is funny … the unions do not like it when they have to abide by the rules the rest of have to work by.
So my Plain Dealer colleagues and I are “weenies,” to use your print edition’s term, because of the tactics we’re using to try to recover some of the thousands of dollars of paycuts we absorbed to help our employer through the recession? Who writes this stuff? Glenn Beck? Rick Perry? Actually, it’s the unnamed author of the Scene and Heard blog, who conveniently uses the cloak of anonymity to take potshots at others. Sounds like the classic definition of weenie to me.
John Mangels
Hi! Two years later and the PD is in even more trouble now!!!
It’s like they’re on a slide at the playground. It just keeps going down.