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Gannett Orders One-Week Furloughs For Staff, Including TV Stations

Jan 14, 2009  •  Post A Comment

Gannett, which owns 23 television stations across the United States as well as newspapers including USA Today, is having its employees participate in a mandatory furlough program requiring them to take off a week of work without pay, according to a memo obtained by Editor & Publisher.
The memo from Gannett CEO Craig Dubow said the furlough is for Gannett employees “across all U.S. divisions and at corporate headquarters.”
“We are doing this to preserve our operations and continue to deliver for our customers while confronting the issues raised by some of the most difficult economic conditions we have ever experienced,” wrote Mr. Dubow, according to E&P.
A call to a Gannett representative was not immediately returned.

7 Comments

  1. WOW

  2. Wow is right. I wonder how long it will be before the geniuses at Tribune follow suit. Gulp.

  3. Beats dumping some indeterminate number of employees instead.
    I’m also sure on-camera talent will be exempt.

  4. Thinking outside the box. I like the way they roll. As long as they don’t have to lay anyone off.

  5. wow, i think bill and mike have been mixing up to much kool-aid

  6. They should shut down their stations and newspapers for a week as well if they are serious about this. Having staff stay home simply degrades the quality of their output and further drives away viewers, readers and ad revenue.

  7. It has been done before. We had to do this at The Press of Atlantic City many years ago. It is preferable to laying off people, is it not? So far as hurting their product, nobody would be mentioning that if Gannett gave each employee an extra week of paid vacation. This will have the same effect. The absences will be staggered across time, not all at once.

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