If just 14 leave, 345 years of service will be lost

By the best estimates at present 14 Beacon Journal Guild members and four managers have signed up for buyouts. If all leave, the loss would be 345 plus years of service not counting the four managers. The management’s guess is that it would take 20 people to save the desired $1.5 million.

Everyone has seven days from when they signed to rescind. The company can decide which to accept. In estimating the years of service we added only the years and not months. If someone had 30 years and 10 months service, only 30 years was used to compute the total. The two staffers with the most service are Charles Montague and Ted Schneider who eacdh have 38 years.

Drum roll. Here’s the list by job title:

Artist
Chip Bok (cartoonist) not confirmed because he is in Europe 25 years
Dennis Earlenbaugh 32 years

Clerk
Telli Gulledge (years of service not known)

Copy Editor
Betsy Lammerding 35 years
Chuck Montague 38 years
Ted Schneider 38 years

Librarian
Diane Wright 23 years

Photographer
Ken Love 11 years
Lew Stamp 30 years

Reporter
Tracy Wheeler 11 years
Brian Windhorst 12 years
David Giffels 14 years
Elaine Guregian 18 years
Carl Chancellor 24 years
Connie Bloom 34 years

Managers
Val Pipps
Mitch McKenney
Ann Mezger
Keith McKnight (not confirmed but widely reported)

Both the Newspaper Guild and the Teamsters are now in negotiations.

Carmen Parisi of the Teamsters reporting on a company offer called it the "worst I've ever seen."

The details:

• 15% wage cuts across all classifications
  
• On top of that, an increase in the work week from 37.5 to 40 hours (a 6.7% workload increase in return for a 15% pay reduction)
  
• Freeze the pension
  
• No extra money toward health care (meaning any increase in the premium will be borne by the employees).

This is on top of the sweeping non-economic proposals that would abolish jurisdiction, permit outsourcing, and do away with job classifications/titles.

The Guild expects to receive an offer similar in nature and will weigh that factor in bargaining while dealing with all other open issues on the table.

Bargainers for BJ employees say that “listening to the company you would think that last rites are in order for the industry.”

Meanwhile publisher David Black is one of the prospective buyers of the San Diego Union Tribune.

On July 16, a post on this biog. quoted from an article on Seattle.com by Don Ward about publisher Black.

The article, headlined “Betting on David Black,." poses this question:

Major dailies are shedding employees, hemorrhaging cash, and losing advertisers to the Web. So why is David Black swimming in ink?

The article is worth reading. Click on the headline to see the post