Tribune CEO Terry Jimenez was unwilling to hear from workers facing furloughs..(X-post from GD)

[guillaumeb]

Tribune Publishing CEO Terry Jimenez was unwilling to hear from workers facing furloughs and salary cuts.

From the article:

More than 100 Tribune Publishing employees told off their bosses in an internal Slack channel yesterday, calling out executives by name for putting shareholders’ interests over workers’ well-being and ability to report and deliver crucial local news to their communities, while pleading with them to consider alternatives to sweeping furloughs and cuts. The top boss responded by running away.

Tribune Publishing, which operates iconic papers like the New York Daily News, Baltimore Sun, and Chicago Tribune as well as lesser-known but vital local papers in eight markets, is backed by the reviled vulture capital firm Alden Global Capital, best known for stripping the Denver Post for parts...…

"Tribune gives $9 million on shareholder dividends, and then tells employees it's critical that they take pay cuts and furloughs that will save them just $556,979," another staffer wrote. "The person who made these decisions at Tribune hasn't mastered basic math."

To read more:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mank/boss-flees-slack-as-workers-deride-corporate-greed-tribune-publishing

Austerity for the workers, dividends for the rich is the hall mark of vulture capitalism.

[PoliticAverse]

1. As long as they can keep getting away with it they'll keep doing it.

(Just like the airlines).

[guillaumeb]

2. Mitt Romney made his wealth that way.

These vulture capitalists are not job creators.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

3. I'm about done with the Trib. I'm not renewing this June when my current subscription ends.

Been subscribing for about 40 years. It's generally been doing top notch reporting even while it's editorials are poor. But the quality has gradually dropped the last few years and delivery's gotten less and less reliable.
It's a shame on a lot of levels.
Hindsight's 20/20 but at this point you can draw a line from their current problems straight back to the Zell purchase around 2008.

[guillaumeb]

4. Zell drained a lot of money from the paper.

He basically used the Tribune's money to borrow the money he used to buy the paper.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

5. Standard vulture stuff there but he also actively damaged the holdings like WGN.

I don't know why we allow this to happen. They eat these businesses alive and it's not good for jobs or the economy or anything except a handful of investors who'll shelter every nickel.

[guillaumeb]

6. I agree. The laws are written to allow this. eom