San Francisco News Blog

This cake is part of your severance package

Blindfold? Cigarette? Buyout?

Perhaps 50 union employees at the San Francisco Chronicle -- most of them from the paper's editorial side -- aren't waiting for the axe to drop and have already agreed to accept a buyout, says one of the paper's guild representatives.

Carl T. Hall, a 22-year veteran reporter at the Chron and local guild rep, said the paper's buyout offer is open until the last day of the month. Hearst Corp. has expressed a desire to wash its hands of 150 union employees, and Hall doesn't expect that number to be reached via buyouts alone. Layoff notices are anticipated by mid-April.

The terms of the buyout aren't ostensibly any sweeter than the fate awaiting future Chron pinkslip recipients. The departed will receive two weeks pay for every year with the company (capped at one year's pay) and the same amount of COBRA health care. Yet many older workers will likely sign on the dotted line, as, in a move unrelated to the paper's much ballyhooed potential demise/super hardball union negotiations, the Chron's pension plan is now unstable enough that lump sum payments will cease for any worker who doesn't indicate a desire to leave by March 31.

"A lot of people my age or over are going to do it," said Chron assistant Home & Garden editor Laura Thomas, 56, who has opted to take the buyout. "This is really hard, especially for people who've been at the Chronicle for a long time. This is all they've done. When you're a reporter it doesn't seem like there's any other industry worth working in."

Thomas expects more and more fence-sitters will take the buyout as the end of the month approaches. Hall said one of the major reasons not to is, simply, to earn several weeks more pay.

A goodbye party is scheduled Friday for Thomas and several others. It does not promise to be an effortlessly ebullient affair.

"I think a lot of people may not even want to show up for the cake-cutting," said Thomas. "This is very depressing."

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