Chronicle Union Rep Now Pondering What Management Meant By 'Proportional Layoffs' After Dust Has Settled

During the San Francisco Chronicle's much-publicized "Do it or the paper gets it" bargaining sessions with its union employees, negotiators reported that the paper's management promised a "proportional" number of cuts would be made among the union workers -- many of them reporters -- and the non-union editors overseeing them.

After all, it wouldn't make sense to, say, clear out half your newsroom employees and then keep just as many editors to oversee a diminished staff would it? Well, in the Chron's world, apparently it does. 

"I'm not a cheerleader for cuts in management's ranks just to make us feel better," says Carl Hall, a former longtime Chron science writer and the Media Workers Guild's union rep. "But I think that it's a fair point that if there are far fewer staff, why do you need so many managers? We did hear the management negotiators tell us there would be 'proportional cuts' across the board. And I do not see that yet in the [management] ranks."

Chronicle managing editor Stephen Proctor refused to opine on this matter, deferring to editor in chief Ward Bushee. Bushee's office shunted the call to marketing director Michael Keith -- who refused to comment. Perhaps this proves Hall's accusation -- the paper requires three managers to not make a comment.

The Guild has announced that 151 of its reporters, advertising, or production workers have been bought out or laid off since the Chron demanded it thin its ranks -- or else -- earlier this year. The number of employees in the newsroom alone has dipped from 218 to 139. The paper has, as noted above, not publicized the number of managers who have been shown the door.

Hall said he still expects the Chron to hold to its promises regarding proportionality: "We do expect good faith from them. Maybe some of the cuts just haven't happened yet."

The longtime reporter noted, however, that frontline reporters losing their jobs while upper management stay on is par for the course these days in the dwindling newspaper biz.

"I think the news industry is badly led and has made some colossal errors in strategic judgment -- and it doesn't seem like too many of those higher level execs are being held accountable for basically destroying their industry, and our jobs," he said. "When the military screws up, people from the Pentagon get busted down into the ranks or get forced into retirement."

Perhaps. But sometimes they get the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Make of that what you will.