How the press workers at the Los Angeles Times bucked the paper's legacy and organized at the notoriously anti-union employer.
It's tough to imagine what Gen. Harrison Gray Otis -- the bellicose press baron with the steely gaze and a speaking voice once likened to "that of a game warden roaring at seal poachers" -- would make of his family's recent decision to sever the last of its ties with the Los Angeles Times.
The 19th-century publisher, were he looking down upon this vale, couldn't be too happy that his descendants have walked away from the paper he built. At the same time, Otis was a savvy enough businessman that he might at least take some pleasure from the terms of their exit: When all is said and done, his scions will have pocketed about $3.5 billion from their sale of parent Times Mirror Company to Tribune Company.
And yet there's another development at the Times that would undoubtedly elicit no such mixed emotions from the general.
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Rick Wartzman's American Prospect Article
"....One of the primary reasons that the union prevailed at the newspaper was a feeling among the employees that they've been asked to work a lot harder without getting much in return..."
ReplyDelete"Work a lot harder".... compared to what?
When The Times was sold, Sue Klutnick a past Oly Plant Director said in so many words.... Now they are going to find out what working for ever other newspaper in the country is like!