Globe and Mail offers staff voluntary buyouts
The memo doesn’t outline the target savings the newspaper hopes to achieve from the buyouts, but Crawley told staff at a town hall meeting that “If we get 60, I’ll be happy,” The Globe and Mail reported. “That number would represent about 8 per cent of The Globe’s 770 employees,” The Globe said.
The Globe and Mail is offering employees a voluntary separation package to help reduce its annual expenses.
In a memo delivered to staff, the Globe’s publisher Phillip Crawley said “While our weekly online readership is up 16 per cent, print is declining, with the last three months being particularly disappointing.”
The memo doesn’t outline the target savings the newspaper hopes to achieve from the buyouts, but Crawley told staff at a town hall meeting that “If we get 60, I’ll be happy,” The Globe and Mail reported. “That number would represent about 8 per cent of The Globe’s 770 employees,” The Globe said.
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Employees have until May 10 to apply for the buyout, which is available to all regular full-time and part-time staff who have accrued more than five months of employment. Decisions will be announced a week later on May 17.
[node:ad]According to the memo, payouts will be based on the employee’s months of continuous service, and “will be equal to one week’s base salary for every five months of continuous service or major fraction thereof up to a maximum of 18 months, less statutory deductions required by law.”
The Globe last offered buyouts in 2009. Last summer*, Crawley also told employees to take furloughs to avoid cutting staff jobs, and reduced its staffing costs by roughly 10 per cent. The newspaper also asked staff to take summer furloughs again this year – the difference being it is voluntary in 2013.
*Disclosure: Tamara Baluja, the writer of this article, was an employee of The Globe and took unpaid leave last summer.
Tamara Baluja is an award-winning journalist with CBC Vancouver and the 2018 Michener-Deacon fellow for journalism education. She was the associate editor for J-Source from 2013-2014.