Going after the "biggest" paychecks

Regarding the beancounters' desire to go after high salaries within newsrooms for layoffs and cutbacks, that might be happening up in Minnesota but with a twist:

http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2008/12/04/5021/strib_to_newsroom_take_19_million_pay_cut

The plan would get eliminate or greatly reduce "merit pay," which management awards above union scale (from $37,128 for rookies to $69,888 for six-plus-year veterans). Assuming merit pay has really gone to the meritorious, the Strib's best journalists would get the biggest cuts.....Other facets: a three-year wage freeze, cutting overtime, and reducing or eliminating "night differential," the $8-$14 per day paid to those working the late shift.

This would stink if you had earned merit pay over the years and now were faced with losing it in part or in whole from your paycheck. For those who never got much or any, the pain obviously would be less.

Seems democratic to a fault (everyone gets paid the same...forever?). A very progressive income tax to start.

 

Ideally, the industry (and others) would establish a floor rather than a ceiling -- outstanding work over the years deserves to be rewarded -- but these aren't ideal times. This is another example of how an upper-middle life, even for a minority of journalists, isn't really possible in this business. But it lives elsewhere: A buddy of mine is a pastor of a church in a small flyover town. He makes a great living for the area. If I were to work at the paper in his town, I would be on food stamps.

 

Eliminating night differential . . . that's locking the barn after the horse is gone.

There's a reason that's there. All things being equal, folks would rather not shear years off their lives by working/sleeping unfriendly, odd hours.

Hellooooooooo.