It's gonna be shitty and awful. All while we are making hundreds of millions of dollars for Sam Zell--just not enough to pay off his mortgage. What an outrage.
There is nothing that we can do immediately to halt the ignorance and rapacity of this new round of cutbacks. But we can continue to think, to plan, to dream of brighter days.
The immediate goals are the same. Sam Zell is a public figure who is destroying a major institution, important both to Southern California and to the coverage of the nation and the world as a whole. His actions need to be examined intensely. He needs to know this. When questions are raised, we need to ask them. We are journalists. This is what we do: hold truth to power.
The second goal is to raise the awareness of LA Billionaires, specifically, those who want to have a real newspaper cover the issues in their community: poverty, politics and wealth. Entertainment, sports and business. Street closings and corruptions, bad cops and good ones, health care and wildfires. Do you want less information and less news? Do you want to know less about the shots in the air you heard last night, about the smoke drifting over your backyard, about the bulldozers flattening a new development? Then stand there and do nothing.
It's simple. One, microscope Zell. Two, flash a warning light to the community at large. We want the paper sold to somebody who cares about where we live and what we do.
Michael Hiltzik, one of the Times best investigative reporters, gets the ball rolling on the first point today with this question: Is the LA Times in compliance with the California WARN act in announcing these firings?
The California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act of January 2003 is designed to give employees a chance to find news jobs in case of a mass firing. A mass firing is defined as 50 or more people axed in 30 days IF they equal 1/3 of the workforce.
A first question here is "workforce?" Do all editorial workers count as "workforce"? Or do reporters III count as one workforce, and copy editors another.
If these current firings trigger the WARN act, you have to have 60 days notice in writing that you are going to be laid off. If the LAT doesn't give you the notice, it has provide back pay and benefits to cover the gap in the 60 days between when you were laid off and when you were noticed.
How is it enforced? A lawsuit. Employees must hire employment lawyers if they feel that the company has not followed the law. That's not terribly encouraging since it's so damned hard to find and hire an attorney. But such a system is typical of the dramatic downsizing in government regulation during the past decade under both Democratic and Republican administrations. There's nobody left in Government to actually blow the whistle.
Here are some helpful background documents on the WARN act from the Legal Aid Society in San Francisco
6 comments:
LATimes is "making hundreds of millions?" er, no. If the paper was going to make $200 million this year in cash flow, it would be exceeding expectations (originally stated at the $190 million level), and would not be in turmoil. The problem is the cash flow is shrinking. Fast.
Is there a buyer out there somewhere who wouldn't care about shrinking cash flow? Maybe. But not a traditional business. Only an individual or a trust.
Zell's no better or worse than any other for-profit owner. If memory serves nobody else wanted Tribune anyway.
Actually, there are both federal and California WARN acts. Only the federal act has the 50+ people AND 1/3 of the workforce requirement. The California act applies to any mass layoff of 50+ people within a 30 day period. It does not have to meet any particular percentage threshold. The Times will have to comply with both laws. You can bet that they are getting good legal advice so it is not likely that they will violate the statutes, it is more likely that they will try to stagger the layoffs so that they do not reach the 50-person limit in any 30-day period.
Does the 60 days' notice apply to the group -- say, "editorial employees" -- and therefore anyone falling within that group should consider that they've now been given notice; or is the 60 days' notice meant to apply to individuals, meaning not until a person is actually individually "tapped" does the clock start? Anyone know?
Zell is far worse than any other profit owner. Here is a man who cares nada for journalism and/or journalists. He has no investment in this paper whatsoever. At least Tribune seemed to care about journalism.
So, let's say Zell ruins the LAT as a newspaper--as long as it becomes a worthy, semi-worthy business venture...as long as he makes up some measure of his debt...Who cares? He certainly won't be crying over the end of the LATimes...
It's win-win for Zell.
How is cutting back to stay in the black ignorant or rapacious? Is the paper a healthy, solvent business entity? Is Tribune Co. as a whole? And don't give me any crap about your fabulous news-gathering fishcakes duty to the public ... the public doesn't care. In fact, if anyone cared, there would be no need for cuts. If you'd look up from your navel, you might see -- we are not relevant. No one cares. The Emperor is buck naked, OK? And it's not a charity. Newspapers aren't nonprofits. Wake up and help figure out how to fix the problem before we default on that bigass loan and all get shown the door.
And listen up, everyone -- in case we can't make that big payment next year, if you think for a second that the Tribune's debtholders (i.e. investment banks, who are bigger SOBs than Zell ever dreamed of being) are going to pay our payroll while they wait to find a buyer, you are the most sadly deluded bastards on the planet.
Of course, judging from this blog and the comments on it, I believe you may very well be already.
The problem is far deeper than that. So far, nobody has shown how Zell stands a chance in hell of paying off $13 billion ... we're dumping huge and hugely profitable assets like Wrigley, the Cubs and Newsday, and we're not making a dent in the loan principle.
In good economic times, that would be a bad sign. In the steadily worsening disaster that we're living in now, it's simply unworkable: A business with diminishing cash flow can't carry $13 billion. And burning the furniture to buy time is obviously futile.
So, I must ask "Why?" Why would Zell (and his Clear Channel henchmen) sign on for an unwinnable war? My guess is that they're backing up the truck to take value out of this company (OUR company, partners!) every day. Got to wonder if they're not slicing 5 percent (or more) off the top on every asset sale, and perhaps filtering a lot of hugely profitable work to their inner circle of accountants, bankers, bond underwriters, lawyers, etc.
The problem is, they're selling off the VALUE of our company, our business, our livelihood, our future. They're selling off the assets that Tribune, Times Mirror and the Chandlers spent decades accumulating. And they're doing it to pay interest on a debt that THEY created through this over-leveraged purchase.
None of this will ever benefit us, nor will it keep the company out of bankruptcy. At this point, I've got to believe we'd be better off with a quick default followed by a takeover by the banks - they might at least offer a 50-50 shot at focusing the business on the mid-term or long-term instead of this goofy month-by-month nonsense.
Ya heard it here first: Zell and his flunkies will skate out of this deal with tons of money, while the employees will be screwed and the company will be imploded.
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