Thursday 22 April 2010

NB Nugget -6

Six ad designers at the profitable North Bay Nugget have been pink-slipped effective May 28, with more layoffs on the horizon, says the North Bay Newspaper Guild.

The Nugget is reducing its workforce "as part of a Quebecor-Sun Media consolidation to non-union shops in eastern and southern Ontario," the union says in a lengthy press release today.

The release also says verbal notice has been given about having news pages paginated at the Sudbury Star in the very near future, with a couple more full-time senior employees soon to be terminated.

In late 2008, two full-time photographers with more than 50 years of combined experience were laid off, one news department manager position was vacated, one advertising manager position disappeared, a long-time maintenance man was given the heave-ho within a year of retirement and a long-time ad layout coordinator was severed, the union says.

”We’re not happy with the reductions, we don’t believe they make good business sense and they don’t reflect the support Nugget readers and advertisers continue to give this newspaper,” said Guild president Dave Dale.

”We hope our readers and advertisers take the time to tell our boss and his corporate bosses they expect local employment from their local newspaper,” he says.

Dale says the six jobs lost, when added to recent cuts, amount to more than 15% of the local full-time and part-time workforce.

As far as the Guild can tell, the Nugget has made sizable profits every year despite the recession and industry challenges, Dale said.

1 comment:

  1. Just wait until they take those non-union jobs and move them to India

    ReplyDelete