Newspaper Merger to Cut Staffs by 30%, Officials Say

The planned 1992 merger of the San Diego Union and Tribune will reduce the newspapers’ editorial staffs by about 30%, Copley Newspapers executives told Newspaper Guild leaders Thursday.

When the morning Union and afternoon Tribune merge in February, the two newspapers’ combined 429-person editorial, photography and library staff will be cut by 117 to 139 employees, Copley officials informed Newspaper Guild officers at a negotiating session.

That estimated cutback, which could save the new Union-Tribune up to $6 million annually in base salaries, does not include possible layoffs among the newspapers’ management or in other departments, company officials said.

Herb Klein, Copley Newspapers’ editor in chief, said Thursday that the reason the 117- to 139-job loss range was projected, rather than a single specific number, was that “we’re still deeply in the process of developing exactly how many people you need to produce the kind of newspaper we want.” Based on that range, the editorial staff cutback would be 27% to 32%.

Though the papers’ management has offered an early retirement and buyout package intended to entice some employees to depart voluntarily before the two newspapers merge into a single publication with morning and afternoon editions, most cutbacks will presumably occur through involuntary layoffs, Guild officers said.

Although the cut announced Thursday removed one of the major uncertainties concerning the merger and was not as deep as some of the newspapers’ staffers had feared, it drew a generally somber reaction in the papers’ newsrooms.

“It’s like telling the condemned man there’s an execution date,” said Ed Jahn, the Guild’s president. “Still, having more information is useful. At least now people know what kind of a crapshoot it’s going to be and can figure that their odds (of being laid off) are maybe one in three.”

The job cutbacks will be made, not on the basis of seniority, but rather on Union and Tribune management’s subjective effort to “pick the very best people possible . . . based on some precise, professional standards,” Klein said.

In exchange for the proposed buyout package--which, among other provisions, calls for employees leaving voluntarily to receive 2 1/2 weeks of salary for every year worked, compared to two weeks’ per year severance for those laid off--Copley executives have demanded that the Guild waive its right to sue over the layoffs, Guild officers said.

Since workers who feel they were improperly dismissed would retain the right to sue individually or to pursue other legal options, company officials have told the Guild they do not want the labor union offering disgruntled former employees “two bites out of the apple,” said Chet Barfield, the Tribune’s delegate to the Guild’s merger negotiation committee.

The grievance waiver demand is of particular concern to Guild leaders, however, because of the subjective nature of the impending layoffs, Jahn said.

“There are going to be people who have been here 20 years who are going to be told, ‘So long,’ while a person sitting next to them who’s maybe been here only four or five years will stay,” Jahn said. “And there may not always be an adequate explanation for that. What the company is asking the Guild to do is give up the right to force it to explain, ‘Why me?’ ”