By Joel Thurtell
What kind of human being would do this:
Fire 6,000 employees, freeze the pay of those who remain and then demand they take 12 percent pay cuts.
And give himself a 50 percent raise, banking $4.7 million in a single year.
What kind of human being would pay herself $4 million, almost a 280 percent raise from her earlier $1.4 million?
And take part in the firing and “furloughing” of thousands of workers.
How did she arrive at the number of human beings to be fired?
Maybe by computing how many employees’ salaries would have to be cut to equal her desired raise in pay and the raises her top-ranked pals had planned?
I really wonder what kind of people these are:
Craig Dubow, head of Gannett, the newspaper chain that owns the Detroit Free Press and controls the Detroit News, snatched the $4.7 million.
Gracia C. Martore, Gannett’s chief financial officer, nailed the $4 million.
They allowed a third alleged human being to have a place at their trough: David Hunke, now heading a losing proposition known as USA Today, but former commander of the Free Press and News.
Like his pals at the top of Gannett, Hunke got a big raise in 2009: $1.9 million, including his $355,000 bonus.
We have to assume Hunke’s bonus was for hoodwinking Detroit newspaper unions into the belief that the papers were in financial trouble so the workers could be gulled into accepting pay cuts and health benefit concessions while the bigwigs laughed on their way to the bank.
According to The Newspaper Guild Local 22 website, “We agreed to a wage freeze. Employees have been without wage increases since January 2008. We agreed to unpaid furloughs. We agreed to higher monthly payments, co-pays and deductibles in health benefits. The concessions saved millions of dollars. The question is: What have these savings been used for? What are these concessions funding?”
Now I ask you, what kind of human being could justify taking so much money while shafting so many people?
Are they so rich and powerful they don’t have to justify themselves?
Greed, together with unfettered access to the trough, led them to make such hogs — I mean, well-fed human beings — of themselves.
But you know what? Once upon a time, my wife and I raised pigs. I found pigs to be very intelligent and even articulate creatures. I liked them. They were in a way humane.
Whereas these three human beings I’ve just described just don’t fit my stereotype for hogs.
Another mammal comes to mind.
It is far less savory than the swine metaphor.
And yet, it may be more apt.
Let’s think about this: The entire newspaper industry is in trouble. Gannett has described itself in peril. If you were a top manager and had unrestricted access to the treasury, and if you were convinced that your enterprise might go bust pretty soon, might you not (if you lacked ethics and humanity) be tempted to grab whatever money you could get now and the future of the company be damned?
What kind of animal knows instinctively when a ship is on the way to Davy Jones’ locker?
What knowledge do these three rats have that they won’t share with the rest of the world?
Is Gannett that close to folding?
So, my former Guild brothers and sisters, to answer your question of what has happened to all the money you gave up so the company could survive, you’d need to examine the personal checkbooks of Dubow, Martore and Hunke to find out what these rats are spending their salaries on.
The unions were suckered once by these greedy rodents.
Question is, What can they do about it now?
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
