Buyouts, layoffs and age-discrimination...

I have zero problem with any of these guys suing their papers if age descrimination takes place... I hope they win tons of money...

What sucks is when papers have to turn their attention to another and possibly younger employee to force them to take a buyout. I know of one place that lost their best desker in a similar situation. The employee they wanted to get rid of refused to retire and threatened to sue while they bought out the contract of a desker who was in his 50s...

And let's be honest, most of the people who are taking buyouts are bullied into doing so. The ones who get lucky are the ones who already have another gig lined up (JA Adande) or the ones who were going to retire anyway... Most of the people I know who have taken them are in their 50s and wanted to work for another decade or so...

 

How can you prove age discrimination? Obviously your Exhibit A is the average age of those who take the buyouts, but if you asked the publishers pushing them to choose between a 45-year-old with 20 years tenure there and a 60-year-old who got there two years ago, I don't think they go after the old guy. And that's their defense.

 

is there an award for dumbest post of the year?

 

And then there's the flip side: I know a couple of guys in their 60s who wanted the buyout so they could retire....and the paper said no, too valuable, we want you here.

 

All I know is my paper just had a round of buyouts. I didn't take one. Then the guys who did affected my job in such a way that I sure wish I had.

 

tony - have you asked if they'll still buy you out?

 

Did the papers mean it -- and maybe back it up with a "valuable employee" raise? Or were they just playing chicken, figuring the old guys might retire anyway, so why send them off with a year of salary?

As for leo1, plenty of people get bullied into buyouts by chicken-bleep managers who use implied threats of demotion, lousy shifts and schedules, unreasonable increases in workload and other s--- duty if they don't get out NOW! Of course, that's always gone on in this business, whether buyouts were in the mix or not. Dump on the old guy until he retires. Except that "old" is younger than it's ever been, because even a few merit raises makes you a target when a newsroom is ``right-sized.''

 

I suspect there was some 'who blinks first' going on there....one guy quit anyway, the other stayed. These were both long-time writers at a major paper. Not sure of all the details, but I'd guess your latter scenario would be accurate....if they leave, you can replace them at a lower salary, if they stay, you still have your top guys in place.

 

There's a fine line. Some of these older folks just need to go, and not necessarily because they are older folks. Some of these older folks are not only competent, they are the lifeblood of their respective sections.

The trick is being to get rid of the deadwood.

Usually, however, dead wood doesn't know it is deadwood, and threatens a lawsuit.

 

I'm 33, and I'd love to get a buyout of a few months salary in one big check. Then I could make a down payment on a dining room table.

 

Worse, the deadwood knows it is deadwood, and declines the buyout because it knows it won't get another job elsewhere. So the paper loses competent and confident folks who believe they are employable elsewhere and gets stuck with dregs who aren't.

Part of the problem: Performance review systems that are lousy and accomplish little, other than justifying the scarcity of raises.

 

Alas, no food then to eat off of it.