Oct 16, 2009

Brother, can you spare some sick time?

With flu season here and fears the H1N1 strain will make it worse than usual, the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group has asked employees to donate vacation time to anyone who has burned through his or her sick days. Here's part of the memo:
Employees may donate accrued vacation time for the benefit of a fellow employee who is not covered under the company's sick time benefit or for a fellow employee who had already exhausted all of his/her sick time. Please contact Human Resources for further details on this program.
The charitable urge might be dampened a bit by the fact that the parent company, LANG, has spent the last year cutting employee vacation benefits to save money. In April, management instituted a six-month vacation freeze, meaning no one could accrue additional time off. With the freeze still on, the company ordered employees to use a week's worth of vacation to further draw down accounts.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually the vacation freeze was just lifted. Currently there are no new holds/suspensions of benefits other than matching 401K and raises.....at least this week.
Until they shaft us on medical in December.

Anonymous said...

rest assured, you will feel the point of the stick yet again. this was suggested two years or so ago and laughed at along with the idea of employees volunteering to take unpaid time off to reduce expenses...at their request. we all know what happened since. way to stay ahead of the curve lang dolts.

i also hear the ad depts arent functioning well and another resignation from an outside rep at sgvn.

Anonymous said...

6:32....."no new holds/suspensions of benefits" no raises and 401k match, isn't that enough? ya'll sure do take it in the derriere and seem to be okay with it.

newsjunkie said...

heard Lang is losing money AGAIN. does anyone know if that is true? are they going to start giving back the takeaways?

Anonymous said...

This idea might be real popular come Secret Santa.

Anonymous said...

A number of their newspapers are bleeding, bleeding badly.The rest are starting to follow. They have no ad leaders at any of their newspapers and are in desperate need for leadership and direction.

But, alas, it won't be looked at by the people who make the decisions. Watch SGVN start to go down the tubes in profit just like the rest.

Anonymous said...

There certainly is no shortage of well-qualified ad executives available. What are they waiting for? There were some solid ad folks there when LANG started.

Anonymous said...

yep, anyone with an opinion or point of view or talent is not welcome...the results speak. take a look just at the daily news in all categories if you think differently.

Anonymous said...

frankly, this group of "executives" truly suck. next they will introduce fire me not my colleague.

Newshound said...

It has been heartbreaking to see what has happened to these newspapers and all the good people working there.

Unfortunately, it's only going to get worse.

Anonymous said...

It would be a wonderful change for this group of newspapers to get noticed for other than screwing employees, bad product decisions and inept leadership. Wouldn't that be a nice change?

Anonymous said...

Looks like the projections of falling revenue at San Gabriel are accurate. I hear a brutal last couple of months with no end in sight. Appears that the honchos left aren't well versed in making money.