OCR Layoffs

Got to love laying off a guy who has already announced he's retiring soon. Am I wrong, or wouldn't it be cheaper to just wait (and not pay a buyout)?

 

I don't know any specifics about these layoffs, but in most cases lately, the 2011 buyouts have not even been close to those buyouts in 2007 and 2008. These days, if you get a week's pay for every year you've been there, you're lucky.

 

Curtis Zupke started at the Register the same time I was there. He was one of the nicest young guys on the staff, and absolutely someone who had a ton of talent. I hope he lands on his feet - and that's definitely crummy timing to let your NHL team's beat writer go with the playoffs approaching.

 

A going away gift? That's been known to happen. Happy retirement with a little severance package to jump start it. Sometimes that's a way the rank-and-file take care of each other even when they have no control over what goes on above them.

 

No, cutting someone already planning to go is the way someone else's job is saved.

The retiring guy is an easy pick to be one of the ones laid off, and he should be. It is doing everyone else a favor, actually. Otherwise, someone else will be going.

The same thing happened at a previous paper I was at. There was a guy who was planning to go, anyway. And if he hadn't, at least two others would have lost their jobs.

 

It also might be a signal his position won't be filled after he leaves.

Not that there was a high chance of it being filled anyway.

 

Yeah, that's what I mean. If somebody is about to depart already, you call him in and try to set it up as a layoff. They get a severance package out of it and it decreases the chance of the next guy getting cut.

At my shop, sports was spared of layoffs the last go-around because there had already been some attrition of, if I recall, three people who had left in fairly short order. We just didn't replace them (well, eventually replaced one) and they counted that as the losses. The rest of the newsroom was slashed, but it was explained to them why sports was spared.

I don't think the severance packages were great but I bet the three guys who left (one retired, one moved to another business -- call him the smart one -- and the other got another journalism job) wish they could have timed it so they would have been been able to take a severance.

 

I've heard on good authority that Zupke was cut because he didn't work for the editor who made the decisions on who to cut. The guy in charge keeps the guys under his own wing and lays off the people under other supervisors. That way his people are able to keep producing and make him look better.

That's BS.

 

In New Jersey, if you're laid off instead of technically retiring, you also can get unemployment. That's what happened to my Dad when he finally decided to stop working at 72.

 

Worked with Zupke on golf when he was the golf writer after John Reger left.

He didn't particularly embrace the sport or the beat, but he worked his ass off to do the best job he could. Plus, he was a class act who always could find a way to help me out with a client.

He deserved better. Far better.