Mission accomplished; and only days before Sam Zell, president and chairman of Tribune Co. ? owner of The Baltimore Sun Media Group ? arrives for a pep talk.
The media group?s February plan to trim 45 positions from its 1,500-person payroll through voluntary buyouts recently met its quota.
“We achieved the number we were hoping to achieve through the voluntary buyouts,” Sun spokeswoman Linda Yurche told The Examiner. She would not confirm that the reduction represented the total number of employees leaving or was an end to the company?s downsizing.
“There?s certainly a lot of buzz that there might be more reductions to come,” said Baltimore-Washington Newspaper Guild President Bill Salganik. “There were no layoffs in the guild. There was a layoff notice sent to the Events Department, [and] I think there are some bosses there leaving [in layoffs].”
The company approved a total of 22 guild members for a voluntary buyout, Salganik said.
There are 1,200 employees at The Sun ? 465 of them represented by the guild ? and another 300 spread throughout the media group?s 21 weeklies in Howard, Harford, Baltimore and Carroll counties.
Only guild-member breakdown numbers were obtained, but they indicate that only six reporters ? including Salganik ? were approved for the buyout.
Four Information technology department guild members also took the buyout, as did four in advertising, seven in finance and one in marketing. The last day of work for those taking buyouts will be March 31.
Zell is scheduled to visit The Sun today.
