'Depressing Day' At 'NYTimes,' Says Guild President
"It's been kind of a depressing day," said Bill O'Meara, president of the Newspaper Guild of New York, when we asked him how Times staffers were taking the news today of layoffs in the newsroom. "It went all through the building very quickly, people were not happy," he said.
The Guild, he said, was notified this morning of the impending layoffs, and spent the rest of the day meeting with Times management in "a cooperative effort to try to minimize the involuntary nature of those layoffs," O'Meara said. Translation: Offer enough severance pay to those on the fence about leaving to get them to leap off happily. "That might solve the whole problem," O'Meara said, but if it doesn't, the Guild will look for currently available positions in other departments in which to place the more stubborn of the laid off.
Departments safe from the cuts include the editorial staff as well as production and design staff—lower-level positions, like office clerks and secretaries, as well as those working with outdated technology, may not be so lucky. The Times' "Recording Room," which housed staff in charge of dealing with audio for the web as well as the transcription of speeches and the like, will be completely eliminated. "Now the White House gives out advance copies and reporters file electronically," O'Meara said. "There's less of a need for that."
Did the cuts come as a surprise, given earlier claims by Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis that "most reductions [will be] associated with the consolidation of the two printing plants in College Point and Edison, NJ"?
"I don't think we were expecting it," O'Meara told us. "But we're very aware of the problems in the industry. We've done this before."
