NYT slashes retirement benefits

This is the kind of business thing we might miss the significance of, but it's a big deal if this mighty company is cutting back on one of the many reasons it has been such a great place to work:

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/mixed-media/2008/11/07/ny-times-co-slashes-retirement-benefits?tid=true

 

Our place put the same deal into play about two months ago.

 

Yeah, they're behind the curve.

 

Sorry, but if some huge corporation did this, the Times would be all over them like white on rice.

 

IF!!!!!

 

Probably out of self-interest.

 

If you don't like Medicare, don't turn 65.

Otherwise you're stuck with it.

 

Super-size that IF all you want. You know I'm right.

 

I'm familiar with this newspaper double standard, and yes, you're right.

 

With all these slashes and people out of work and the auto industry about to fail and people losing their homes ... how are we not in a repeat of the great depression? I've not been let go yet ... but tons of people have been let go. Not just in papers. Where are they and their families going to go? To the streets and eating out of dumpsters? How are we not in a great depression?

 

Historians will quibble about the differences between this mess we're in and the Great Depression. So I just refer to this as a lousy, stinkin' depression.

 

several years ago, my joint tried to fire me because of a disability that prevented me from traveling anymore. it was surreal. i had to lawyer up to convince them of the error of their ways, but for a couple of months. i was essentially fired.

a turning point, i believe, was when i asked the editor in chief: "if i had discovered that one of the teams we cover was treating one of its employees this way after becoming disabled, how do you think we'd report it?"

his response: "point taken."

newspapers like being everyone's conscience but their own.