Gannett Newspapers Making It Even Harder for Victims of Slump

A severance payment scheme at Gannett, one of the US largest newspaper publishing corporations, is making a lot of laid-off employees regretful that they ever worked for the company.

This is yet one more indication of the dire straights America's print press is going through in the industry's worst ever crisis.

The New York Times:

The company says that for most employees the result will be about the same — that in fact, many will get a little more, and a few could get much more. But employees are discovering that some of them, like Ms. Poon, stand to get a lot less than they would have under the old severance packages, and some will get nothing.

Ms. Poon, 26, has a graphic design business that generates a little income, which will lower her state unemployment benefits and may be enough to wipe them out entirely. She is awaiting the state’s ruling to learn which. And if she is not eligible for payments from the state, she will receive nothing from Gannett.

Other former Republic employees who had part-time second jobs say those jobs now mean missing out on thousands of dollars from the company.

“I don’t blame them for cutting and trying to save money because things are bad, but there ought to be a decent severance,” Ms. Poon said. “This way it punishes people for trying to find work.”

Gannett, a largely nonunion company, is under no obligation to make severance or any other payments to most of the people it lays off, and it is not alone in looking for ways to spend less on employees as it weathers the downturn; many newspaper companies, including The New York Times Company, have cut wages and benefits.

There exists a gloomy atmosphere among press workers in the United States that their proud trade will never recover to its former proud self. There exists a gloomy sense in all of us that the world's most shining example of a free press can't find a way to stop the free fall.