Want to join debate over health care lawsuit?

Rather than let the comments languish under "Comments," I'm repeating them in their own open forum.

Feel free to express your opinion. After all, we've spent our careers supporting the First Amendment, which made our profession No. 1 among the Founding Fathers of this country. Just keep it civil, and avoid personal attacks. That's the decent thing to do. And I attach my name to my opinion. That seems less cowardly. But that's just me. And I'll be happy to pull any comments out into the open in this post where everyone can see and evaluate them.

If you want to see the original story on the Composing retirees' lawsuit against the Beacon Journal and Mr. Black, the Canadian, click on the headline. There also is information on how you can join the battle, if you choose.

The "comments" so far:


Anonymous said...
Hopefully you lose. We've all had to make sacrifices. You should too, you greedy old bastards.
7:04 AM

Anonymous said...
Nice way to respect your elders, who made sacrifices for YOU. When someone is promised something in a contract, the other side doesn't get to take it away without consequence. What the BJ did--taking away promised prescription coverage--is no different from stealing from someone's 401K account. The account belongs to the beneficiary, not to the company. That's not a "sacrifice." That's a rip off.
9:18 AM

Anonymous said...
The sacrifices you may have made were negotiated and put there by the 'old folks' in the first place. How do you think the company had something for you to sacrifice?
No one ever put a gun to the heads of company persons agreeing to the terms of a contract.
2:21 PM

John Olesky said...
Management loves it when its workers don't understand that protecting the rights of one segment is important to all segments. Long after we stopped having children I supported maternity benefits because that's what union members do. And the retirees, while they still were working, and happily, at the Beacon, gave up part of their pay raises every year to get the health care benefits that they were promised. These amounts are on record at each negotiations and the actuaries who made the calculations were paid jointly by the union and the company, which each got copies of what each item added to or subtracted from the contract's cost.

Management would love for every person to think he/she can go it alone. It saves them tons of money.

The takebacks, despite written guarantees not to do it, ARE a form of thievery.

Retirees, incidentally, are VERY sympathetic to current BJ employees. It is a situation that we abhor on your behalf. We know that you are trying your best, as we did when we worked for the Beacon Journal, only under far more difficult circumstances than we had under Jack Knight's leadership. Current BJ non-management employees and BJ retirees are on the same side.

I know it's common for "old folks" to bring up John Knight, but Jack was a newspaperperson's newspaperman. He felt, and acted like, both management and employees were in the great newspaper adventure together. Once Tony Ridder came into the picture, that attitude died.

And now an international company controls what happens to current employees and retirees. Are there really any current non-management BJ employees or BJ retirees who are happy with that situation?

But, as current and retired newspaper folks know, debate is healthy. That's why we were/are bulwarks in the First Amendment for decades.

Gina White said ....

I think you could certainly attribute greed to the Beacon Journal's action in cutting retiree benefits.

Anonymous said ....

Sorry to hear about the Canadian reneging on the deal.

However, the "lifetime employment" guarantee explains how the Beacon has had to retain columnists and especially editors who, may I say politely, have been pulling the paper down for years.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The lifetime employment applied only to Composing personnel, which is at the center of the lawsuit involving retired printers. Guild retirees were guaranteed that they would keep the health care in effect at their retirements for the rest of their lives.