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KITV reported last night that Star-Bulletin staffers approved the proposed voluntary 11.5 percent pay cut in exchange for no newsroom layoffs, with 70 of the 71 ballots cast in favor of the deal. The final ballot was blank. I confirmed these numbers with others who were present.Several staff were previously offered cash incentives to retire immediately. Apparently none accepted. No one wants to bail out at this critical time.
The Star-Bulletin followed today with a story of its own.
Not all observers see the deal as a positive step. Here's one comment I received yesterday:
Excuse me Ian, but how is Black working cooperatively with the union?Choices-
1)Five people lose their jobs - Blacks Benefit $350,000
2)Everyone in the news room gets a pay cut because they want to help the non-producers save their jobs (oh I'm sorry the people that have been there the longest will have their jobs whether they are good or bad)- Blacks Benefits $350,000.
Where is Blacks concessions?
That is basically demanding cuts!!!! The Union is working with him!!
Here's the reply I sent to a friend who also had a similarly critical take on the matter:
I don't see it that way.Yes, staff agreed to an 11.5 percent pay cut to avoid layoffs.
It is, however, an open book deal. The books of Star-Bulletin/MidWeek are open for review to prove that the financial situation requires cuts. The need for continuing reductions will be subject to review every three months.And the Guild can walk away from the agreement if there are any indications that it's not in good faith.
The point is that the company intended immediate layoffs. The Guild prevented them from proceeding.
The Guild's newsroom committee--which included some strong characters from the staff, both new and old--crafted a money saving alternative and was able to get the company to agree.
At least the Guild was able to insist that it belonged at the table and had to be part of the decision making aimed at keeping the company afloat.
Is it a step back? No doubt. Pay cuts always are, even if temporary.
Did the Guild run for cover or abandon the field? No.
And the staff did stick together.
For whatever comes next, that's very positive.
Was having the Guild involved better than not having the Guild? I think the answer is an easy "Yes". Remember--the nonunion folks upstairs also took pay cuts in the same order of magnitude, and had immediate layoffs of a reported 15-17 people, or something like 10 percent of staff up there. No room to negotiate. No questions asked.
At least that's my assessment.
We saw the "green flash" from the beach yesterday morning for the first time in a while. Some people are still skeptical, but it's really out there. Really.
Oh--and five meteors overnight in about 15-20 minutes of viewing. There was a thin layer of cloud that dimmed certain parts of the sky, but most of the sky was a dark field bright with stars, and an occasional meteor.
These were the most frustrating times when we lived in Honolulu. News reports of meteor showers, but the city sky perpetually obscured by urban lights. Not here in Kaaawa. Here you just worry about clouds, not light pollution.
Star-Bulletin staffers are scheduled to meet this afternoon to vote on a proposal for avoiding layoffs in the newsroom. There's a pretty tight hold on details of the proposal, but I presume they'll come out following the vote. It will be interesting to see the terms.The tentative agreement between the Newspaper Guild and Star-Bulletin management, reached under pressure of finances and events, appears to reflect well on S-B owner David Black's willingness to work relatively cooperatively with the union for the benefit of the newspaper. That's an optimistic sign in the midst of difficult times.
Pacific Business News also reported yesterday that employees at television stations KHON and KGMB, both owned by Emmis Broadcasting, will be paid 10 percent of their salary in Emmis shares, which can either be sold or held. Union employees, or those with personal contracts, are not impacted. The move apparently avoids layoffs, at least for now.
A quick look at the Advertiser's online edition shows it's featuring several stories that appeared in yesterday's Star-Bulletin, including the Nordstrom deal and the flap over the Iolani Palace flag.
There's also a good story by Frank Cho describing newly available information about the state's antitrust suit against several major oil companies. Although it provides a good review of interesting details in the complex case, it manages to avoid noting that much of the information became publicly available only after S-B writer Rob Perez called attention to the unusual degree of secrecy, which prompted the unsealing of recent records.
Negotiations between the Newspaper Guild and Star-Bulletin management hit the news again last night, prompting this complaint from a Star-Bulletin staffer:Once again, I have to learn about my future from KITV first. Last I checked, not even an email about this from our union reps...According to the KITV story, union members at the Star-Bulletin are expected to vote Friday on a plan to avoid newsroom layoffs in exchange for an across the board salary cut. Five jobs in the newsroom had been targeted for elimination by management.
There's not much news in Kaaawa. Sunrise keeps getting later, forcing us to continually shift our morning walks towards a later departure. By the end of the year, we'll actually miss the sunrise on weekday mornings, because we can't wait long enough to see the sun finally cross the horizon. But that's another month away.
For now, it's prime time for colorful dawns.
No, I didn't give her a dog bone. She actually seemed more interested in us than in any food we might be carrying. This friendly piggy lives just a block or so away, and is usually jealously guarded by a very vociferous canine friend. But on Monday morning she was surveying her domain without escort, and we were able to have a brief interaction. She's obviously eyeing me with interest.
It's nice to be back home and regaining some semblance of normalcy.
Not another dog
Word is slowly going around about exactly who got the ax in the Star-Bulletin layoffs last week. So far, I think they've been confined to business and sales staff in the company's fifth floor offices at Restaurant Row, the nonunion part of the business, while negotiations are apparently still underway regarding potential cuts in the unionized newsroom.Seniority does not appear to have been considered. Some longtime MidWeek staffers were reportedly among those losing their jobs, along with newcomers. I'm still don't have a full account of who has been cut, so let me know if you've got any info about the layoffs.
I'm not sure what time zone my brain is operating in. This morning my brain awoke earlier than the cats. followed shortly by the rest of the body. I hate to think what happens at the other end of the day.Newspaper readers in Green Bay, Wisconsin, are learning about the Honolulu Star-Bulletin today as part of the Green Bay News-Chronicle's 29th anniversary.
The News-Chronicle, like the Star-Bulletin, is fighting the odds by publishing in direct competition with Gannett, in their case with Gannett's Green Bay Press-Gazette. As part of its anniversary week, the News-Chronicle is publishing four columns by Richard McCord, author of The Chain Gang, about other places around the country where newspaper publishers are challenging the Gannett chain. Today's column describes the struggle to keep the Star-Bulletin open. Nothing new, but an interesting read nonetheless.
And from News-Chronicle staffer Ray Barrington, this bit of additional news:
First off, some good news from the good guys. A former Green Bay Press-Gazette writer, Tom Murphy, has moved his business column to the News-Chronicle. Murphy, a longtime Green Bay reporter, did a Sunday business news-and-gossip piece. He retired from full-time work three years ago but kept on doing the Sunday column. A couple of months ago, he announced his retirement; turns out the "retirement" wasn't exactly voluntary (at a Gannett paper? Surprise!) So he got in touch with us.Of course, the Press-Gazette had to make some move, so they claimed the title of his column, "Heard on the Street" was copyrighted. Maybe so, maybe not, but it's running in our paper as "Street Talk."
And by the way, doesn't the Wall Street Journal have a "Heard on the Street" column? Who's zooming whom?
And we've already had subscription calls linked to Murphy's column.
I feel a bit like I'm experiencing the process of going blind. In this case, though, it's a dying monitor, which has just been getting progressively slower to start, and colors fading, whites turning to muddy grays, text difficult to read, and photos harder and harder to decipher. I'm ready to declare defeat and turn myself over to the Costco gods to see what they've got on cheap sale.
We're back, although I've pretty much lost track of the day and hour. Yesterday turned into a blur of airports, airline food or lack thereof, and airline mechanics...I guess that sort of gives away the story, doesn't it? The already long 12-hour series of flights from Atlanta to Honolulu turned into a grueling 19-hour marathon (24-hours from wake-up to arrival) when a bad battery caused our flight to turn back about 45-minutes into the Los Angeles-Honolulu segment. We returned to Los Angeles, and finally got back in the air about five hours behind our original flight schedule.Sitting in the plane on the ground in Los Angeles about 4-1/2 hours after boarding, the whole affair was close to meltdown. Flight attendants were digging out their contracts and closely examining their hours, the cockpit crew was in negotiations with the mechanics and ground supervisor, at least one passenger was demanding to leave, babies were crying. A flight attendant broke into an emergency supply of fruit bars pulled from what looked like a survival case of some kind and they were being distributed to the increasingly unruly crowd, the only food available after a long wait. Luckily, just when things could have gone from bad to worse, the installation of a replacement battery was completed, lights brightened up, and we were ready to head for home. Oh, they did load fresh meals and fed the masses. Just in time.
And we made it home. All cats were fine. Then this morning's terrible news of the crash of another American Airlines' jet in New York.
Another moment of silence for those who will never complete their trip home for the holidays....
Are we the only ones who remember back to the Vietnam War era when the merger of American flags and clothing was considered un-American, subversive, or worse? Desecrating the flag, was the charge from the right.
So it's eerie to see the migration of these items into the commercial mainstream. Here's a vignette from a store display in the Los Angeles Airport, with everything from flag T-shirts to key chains. The gears of commerce powering through old prejudices to make what seems to me a very different kind of statement.
A note of interest: flags were far less evident in stores, on cars, or on clothing in Downtown Atlanta than here in Honolulu, more of a reasonable scale as opposed to our exaggerated macho flag fetish, which could cover our own self-doubts about island patriotism.
Los Angeles Airport store
November 11, 2001 - Sunday (posted early)
Sorry. I'll be trapped on United Airlines most of Sunday, making my way back to Hawaii via Denver and Los Angeles. Next update on Monday morning from Kaaawa.
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