Tribune Union Employees Offered Buyouts

Newsroom employees at the Morning Call in Allentown received buyout offers from their parent company, Tribune Publishing Co., amid growing fears of significant staffing reductions after hedge fund Alden Global Capital became Tribune's largest shareholder.

In a Tuesday letter obtained by the Philadelphia Business Journal, Tribune Chief Human Resources and Communications Officer Maya Bordeaux told employees at the Morning Call and five other unionized Tribune publications the buyouts are part of the company’s goal to accelerate transformation into a digitally-focused enterprise.

Interested employees must apply for the buyout by Feb. 3 and will find out no later than Feb. 7 if their application has been accepted.

Morning Call editorial staff voted last March to join the The NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia, TNG/CWA Local 38010. Reporter Michelle Merlin, the Guild’s unit chair for the Morning Call, said Tribune did not give a target number it was seeking to accept the buyout packages. There are 46 Morning Call employees who are members of the Guild.

The unionization came after the 137-year-old publication endured a series of buyouts, job cuts and unfilled vacancies culminating in a buyout round in late 2018 that reportedly included more than 10 percent of the staff. Those reductions were accompanied by significant leadership turnover.

The buyout packages on the table are identical to those offered to non-union Tribune employees last week: Two weeks of base pay for one year of completed services to the company; one week of additional pay for every completed year from two to eight years with the company; two weeks pay for each year after nine years of service up to a maximum of 52 weeks. Employees will receive healthcare benefits during the severance period.

While Morning Call employees debate whether to apply for the buyout packages, they are also clearly worried about Alden’s decision to acquire a 32% stake in Tribune this past November. Alden also added two representatives to Tribune’s board of directors with the understanding that it could not increase its stake in the company beyond 33 percent until at least June 30 of this year.

Hundreds of Tribune employees — including what Merlin said was 79% of Morning Call guild members — signed a Dec. 11 petition protesting Alden, citing its “well-documented history of extracting short-term profits from already-lean operations by cutting newsroom jobs and denying fair wages and benefits.”

THREAD: Today a petition signed by 432 employees of Tribune Publishing was sent to the company’s board of directors. In it, we asked the board to take specific steps to show its commitment to #savelocalnews after the board’s decision to give Alden Global Capital two seats... pic.twitter.com/d5L0eqFRWv

— The Morning Call Guild ☀️ (@mcallguild) December 11, 2019

Alden owns the third-largest U.S. newspaper chain, MediaNews Group (MNG), also known as Digital First Media. MNG has gutted most of the 50 daily U.S. newspapers it owns.

The massive cuts at suburban newspapers have created a vacuum of news coverage and neutered an important check on local politics and other power centers that affect suburban communities and businesses.

Chicago-based Tribune has a portfolio that includes the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, The Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Hartford Courant, and additional publications in Pennsylvania and Virginia, syndication operations and websites. It reported revenue of $236 million in its third-quarter last year, down from $255.8 million in the same period of 2018. But its digital side experienced a 49.9% spike in revenue and its digital-only subscribers increased 38%.