Needing Answers

Several Cox Ohio employees today received letters in the mail notifying them that they would no longer have personal days and that sick days would not accumulate (read: use 'em or lose 'em).

I didn't hear about this until late after noon -- after a batch of reporters discussed it over lunch -- because I was on the bus ... more on that in a minute.

Tension was high in the newsroom, as is expected with several disgruntled employees and no answers. E-mails, some snarky and others not, went out on a union-wide mailing list that included top editors at the Springfield News-Sun. Wait, did I just say "union"?

It seems like an oxymoron that a band of unionized employees would be getting such a shaft. After all, don't union contracts typically protect employees against this sort of heavy-handed, unilateral decision making? Not in this case. In fact, the last sentence (I'm told because I never saw the union contract myself) essentially says that if the company so chooses that it can wipe out some of the clauses in the contract, including those dictating the number of sick and personal days afforded to employees.

Further, this same contract doesn't allow employees to strike -- the company refused to agree to a contract that would allow a full-scale, picket-line strike (again, I'm told).

Some union contract ...

The crux of the deal is that half of the people who negotiated this contract are retired. They took buyouts as part of a large-scale business remodeling Cox did not long ago. Was it really fair to let people on their way out negotiate a contract for a group of people that would be left behind?

So what do journalists do in the face of adversity? Mixed drinks. Margaritas. And Killians. Those were the orders of the day at least. I attended a social event after work where the hot topic was, of course, the day's events.

A lot of the comments surfaced around what employees could do in the face of what they see as an unfair decision that was handed down from above without discussion. The more interesting dialogue focused on what message this sends to reporters and how they will react (mind you, this decision does not only affect reporters, but employees in other departments as well. I was just with a group of reporters though.).

One reporter noted that for all the praise the reporters get, this sends a mixed message and will influence people negatively. The corporatization of the newspaper industry is leading to more streamlining and more generalization and less individuality -- employees are becoming just that, employees, not writers and reporters and advertisers and photographers. And when people start to view themselves solely as employees, they start to view their day-to-day efforts as a job and not a career.

That hits home. When people are no longer making a career out of this industry, it will die. The only thing that keeps us alive now is a passion for what we do and a devotion to our audience. But even that passion and devotion should not usurp a necessity to look out for ourselves. These are trying times, and while nobody is losing their job over this particular instance (they'll lose anywhere from about $1,000 to $2,000, I'm told), there is something to be said for the long-term psychological effect this will have.

Rewind. Why was I on the bus? I'm doing a story about why people ride the bus. It won't run until Sunday (expect a link then), but it's worth commenting on now. In the course of talking to a lot of different people, I had several ask me about my job and the industry. Some even pointed out the large-scale changes that Cox Ohio has seen, such as moving a lot of the production to Dayton, Ohio, as part of a universal desk.

Readers -- people outside of this industry -- are noticing. They know jobs are being lost. They know people are being forced to relocate. And to some degree, that's comforting. It's not changing things, but it's comforting to know that people realize newspapers are bleeding out. Answers don't seem to be coming from the inside, so maybe one of these bus riders will have the answer that will save us.

I hope they have that epiphany soon.