By Joel Thurtell
It’s hard for newspapers to cover their own industry.
It’s even harder for them to report news about their own newspaper.
Maybe that’s an excuse the Detroit Free Press could trundle out for running today’s (July 7, 2008) front page propaganda piece under the headline, “Surviving the buyout.”
A reader of this Freep story would think buyouts only happen in the automobile industry. The story focuses on the happy denouement of one American Axle worker who through the good old attributes of diligence, hard work, pluck and, yes, maybe a dose of good fortune, managed to spin his auto-making skills into a job at a parts supplier, albeit in far-off South Carolina.
Let’s see, there were 2,000 buyouts at American Axle, 19,000 at General Motors, and thousands more at Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler. From all that potential source material, the Free Press finds one success story to tell us about. Couldn’t they have thrown in a second happy ending just to show us this was not, maybe, one asymptomatic case?
But my beef with this story is not about the statistical insignificance of the good luck guy it features.
What amazes me is the newspaper’s chutzpah at failing to mention anywhere in the article that Gannett, the owner of the Free Press and Detroit News, last year shed 110 workers by offering buyouts and right now is bargaining with its unions over its goal of buying out 160 more workers at both papers and the corporation known as Detroit Media partnership that runs them. That’s 260 workers, roughly 13 percent of the workforce hitting the streets, and this Page One story keeps the news under the editors’ collective hats.
Remember, this is the same paper that has its heart set on winning a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Detroit’s scandal-ridden mayor.
Why is the Free Press trumpeting another industry’s woes while pretending its own downsizing is a non-event?
Several reasons come to mind.
Embarrassment? Nah, this company is pretty hard to shame. This is the newspaper that bleats about its First Amendment rights in court while privately telling staffers that as employees of a private corporation, they have no First Amendment rights.
Maybe they’re trying to sugarcoat the buyout process for their own workforce, sweet-talking employees as they ease them out the door. Certainly, their aim, based on one anecdote, was to paint a singularly upbeat picture of the fate of people who take buyouts. Upbeat so long as they are exemplary employees, working hard to gain new skills and make themselves more attractive to their bosses because, well, there is an alternative to being bought out. It’s called “You’re fired!”
The irony is that this hardworking guy who hustles to learn additional skills still was considered superfluous at American Axle. But hey, why be picky? If you’re going to extrapolate general conclusions from one case, the logical flaw is already self-evident.
(Incidentally, I know something about buyouts — I’m one of the former Gannett staffers who took a buyout last year.)
Here’s another reason why the Free Press might want to lather the buyouts in whitewash:
Underneath the buyout chatter is the very real threat that if Gannett doesn’t see 150 hands raised for the latest “voluntary” retirement plan, they’ll move to Phase Two.That’s called Layoffs.
Layoffs are a dicey area for Gannett, because part of its staff is unionized with contracts that call for sacking people based on seniority. And part of the staff is not unionized, which means they’re at-will employees subject to being fired at any time for any reason. Or for no reason.
Imagine the turmoil at the Detroit papers as nonunion workers realize Gannett could cherry-pick favorites to keep on, firing anyone who ever displeased them.
But Gannett might be reluctant to lay people off, at least among the union areas.
You see, the union contracts call for an open shop, meaning workers covered by the labor-managment contract aren’t required to become union members.
At both the News and Free Press, there are many relatively new hires, some of whom have refused to join the union. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the free riders believe they’ve ingratiated themselves with management by refusing to pay union dues. These are the suck-ups, kind of like the hero in today’s Free Press buyout story, people managers would love to keep in place while dumping anyone who might have questioned them.
Because of contract rules that demand “last hired-first fired,” the company will have a harder time within union jurisdictions in cherry-picking its favorites to stay.
In other words, if they start laying off in the union people, some of their fair-haired pals may be the first to go.
But if I were a staffer in a nonunion area of Detroit newspapers, here’s the message I’d read in today’s Free Press: “Behave yourself, and we won’t fire you. Maybe.”
Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
Hi Joel:
What a great aticle. I was recently fired by the DMP for alledgedly not meeting its performance improvement plan. Never mind the fact I either came within a commissionnable payoff or exceeded sales goals since February ’08 through June ’08.
When I began working at the DMP 10/15/07 my Manager left in the buyout three weeks after my hire. My director was gone a week later and with revolving interim managers taking the helm I had no way of adequately learning the terriotry I was assigned or the procedures for inputting ads. Add to that, no one in management accompanied me on sales calls in a teritory left without a rep for three months.
Through it all, I’m surviving and holding my head high. I guess i didn’t position myself as one the A-list employees so valued by the higher-ups at the DMP.
Harold S.