Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Innovation at Los Angeles Times Olympic Facility


On July 1st Tribune chief administration officer Gerry Spector sent out a memo to Tribune Employees regarding the scaling down of products that could be selected from OfficeMax. Beginning June 30th, the number of products Tribune Employees can buy from OfficeMax will be reduced from 35,000 items to 1,000, with an annual savings of $500,000.

Not wanting to be outdone by Gerry Spector, our leaders at the Los Angeles Times have introduced and implemented many innovative measures at our production facility called Olympic, to save a few dollars.

Our clocks all display a different time at our facility, not different time zones as one Asian man asked while on a tour, but when the one triple A battery that powered the clock was spent.

Another brilliant idea was to stop the practice of giving away bandages, handling the mental printing plates result in many cuts, we now charge employees 25 cents for a bandage. This isn’t much to pay, but unfortunately the dispensers are usually broken, as you stand there bleeding onto the floor.

With an abundance of spent newsprint cores in the reel room, one of our innovative types thought we should utilized all this unused newsprint by cutting the cores down to the size of a roll of toilet paper. I’m told this serves a duel purpose (1) we will not need to purchase toilet paper (2) most employees will remain at their workstations avoiding a restroom break.

I understand times are rough Sam, but newsprint instead of soft tissue is too rough for most of us to use.


Regular tissue on left, new and improved tissue on right.

2 comments:

Old OC said...

The "Ronnie Survey" says....

"Results will be compiled and revealed when the survey closes on July 15, 2008 at 12:00 AM"

Any results yet???

Or did you decide to pull the plug!

Ronnie Pineda said...

The survey ended at midnight on July 15th, I spent the 16th in negotiations and Thursday coordinating meetings for the bargaining unit in Fountain Valley and East Los Angeles. I will present the results and I'm hoping the survey site will provide a link allowing you to go directly to view the results. I will try to have them available by tonight after my shift.