07 April 2009

Hollowing out continues
at former Osprey newspapers

Layoffs, outsourcing, department closures
leave Ontario dailies a lot less local in nature

If Quebecor continues to outsource jobs and centralize production, the only thing that might still be local about many of Ontario's daily newspapers could be the nameplate on the front page.

Jobs and entire departments are being relentlessly chopped at former Osprey Media newspapers — many of which have served their communities for more than a century — as Quebecor's Sun Media division sends more and more work to non-unionized company facilities in Barrie.

The cuts have been keenly felt in Kingston, Peterborough, Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury, where the loss of the four-person composing room led to the demise of a CWA Canada Local, the Sudbury Typographical Union. (Its last gasp, however, will not come until after an arbitration hearing set for April 27 on grievances related to the layoffs, says president Eric Yeomans.)

Just yesterday, seven workers at the Kingston Whig Standard received notice that they are being laid off effective April 17, says David Wilson, a CWA Canada staff representative. Five of them are ad builders, whose work will be shipped to Barrie.

Debbie Newton, president of the Kingston Typographical Union, says two of three sales assistants are also being cut, leaving only one person to provide support for herself and four other advertising sales staff.

At a time when all media outlets are seeing a drop in advertising revenue, it seems nonsensical to cut support staff, says Newton. She explains that, with commission-based outside sales reps having to take on new clerical duties that will consume about two hours a day, they will spend less time selling, which will eat into their income and translate into lower revenues for Sun Media.

Not having ad builders on the premises will also complicate things for the sales reps, as members of the Sault Ste. Marie Typographical Union have already discovered.

An ad builder and two graphic artists were laid off by the Sault Star on Friday and the pre-press department closed, says Elaine Mills, president of the Local. "They took all their computers out on Sunday and moved them to Barrie."

"They're pretty much our creative department," says Mills and the loss has had a major impact on advertising sales staff. "They went back 35 years with this system, to a time when a sales person sketched ads for a customer's approval."

Instead of being out selling, says Mills, advertising reps are sitting in front of a computer trying to fix ads designed and created hundreds of kilometres away.

An example of how cumbersome the system has become occurred today, she says. A classified adviser who was working on a monthly real estate section had to fax every ad, along with a cover page, to Barrie where it was being produced. Dozens of faxes had to be sent and the phone lines were often busy on the receiving end, turning it into a hair-tearing chore.

Newton in Kingston is anticipating a similar scenario. She notes that the Whig Standard's weekly real estate section usually contains about 160 ads. Each one that is built in Barrie will have to be sent to Kingston by email or fax to be proofed and then sent back to Barrie for corrections.

Mills says the publisher on Friday would not offer any assurances that this would be the end of the layoffs in the Sault. She fears that desktop editors could be next on the chopping block, noting that many of the paper's pages that contain editorial content are already being produced in Barrie. The same is true in Kingston and at most of the other Ontario dailies purchased by Quebecor from a financially-ailing Osprey in 2007.

The most recent layoffs in the Sault followed four cuts in December, when two employees in the newsroom, one in advertising, and an ad builder lost their jobs, says Mills.

There was no forewarning of Friday's layoffs, she adds. The workers received four weeks' pay in lieu of notice; their severance package provided two weeks pay for each year of service.

The president of the Sudbury Local says severance is one of two issues going before the arbitrator later this month.

Yeomans, who has worked at the Sudbury Star since 1972, says he and his three ad builder/graphic artist colleagues were told in mid-December they would be out of work by the end of January. "That was our Christmas present from Quebecor," he says wryly.

They are hoping the arbitrator upholds a clause in their contract (which would have expired at the end of this month) that requires the company give 90 days notice and $60,000 in severance payments if the layoff is due to technological change. If the Local wins the arbitration, the four workers stand to receive up to four weeks more pay and an additional $21,500 in severance.

(The Northern Ontario Newspaper Guild — CWA Canada Local 30232 — represents workers in other departments at the Sudbury Star.)

Nigel Sones, business agent for the CWA Peterborough Local, says five compositors lost their jobs at The Examiner in February when that department was closed. Just before Christmas, seven employees, including reporters, photographers and circulation staff, were laid off.

The composing room was shut down at the Lindsay Post in the fall, when three compositors lost their jobs, says Sones. There are only nine people left in that bargaining unit, which includes editorial, advertising and clerical staff.

Sones says other cost-saving measures taken by Sun Media included reducing the Post from daily to twice weekly publication and the merger of the Port Hope Evening Guide, the Cobourg Daily Star and the Colbourne Chronicle into a daily called Northumberland Today. That paper's bargaining unit, with 25 members, represents advertising, editorial, clerical and prepress employees.