BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Friday, November 14, 2003
Purcell, union president speak
out. Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell's statement just
rolled off the fax machine. It states in full:
Regrettably, it was
necessary for the Herald to reduce its workforce. This was
accomplished through employee voluntary buyouts, retirements,
attrition and the elimination of several positions.
As of Friday, 19 employees have
been impacted. Of those 19, 12 full-time newsroom employees
accepted buy-out agreements and one part-time newsroom employee
was laid off. All impacted employees received a severance
package.
A soft economy and increased
expenses have caused many in the newspaper industry to take
similar action. The Herald worked diligently to minimize the
impact on its employees by reducing expenses in other areas
throughout the company, and only after exhaustive evaluation of
all aspects of our business did this course of action become
necessary.
The 19 figure is lower than the 22
being bandied about (by, ahem, Media Log) earlier today.
Lesley Phillips, president of the
Newspaper Guild of Greater Boston and a Herald staffer, says
that 12 of her members were affected. Of them, eight had applied for
the buyout and were accepted; two, including the part-timer, were
laid off outright; and two whose positions were eliminated have
"bumping rights," which means that they could choose to leave or to
take other union jobs, a situation that would cause two other
employees with less seniority to lose their jobs.
Phillips expressed "sadness" for
those who find themselves unemployed, but also had some praise for
the Herald. "In the past 48 hours I've been convinced that
this company has done what it can to keep the impact low," she told
me. "It's just been stressful. It's been a stressful number of weeks.
We were waiting for this. Now we go forward and go on to fight
another day."
posted at 4:21 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
