Yesterday as our pressroom supervisors held a very peaceful and productive meeting with the six press operators, the demeanor of the meeting quickly changed to a hostile environment as one of our Tribune managers entered the room, and our meeting became very unproductive.
This particular Tribune Boss can be pleasant at times, but he has lost touch with reality with his demands upon the press operators, we cannot be in more than one place at a time. I highly recommend all of our Tribune Boss’, at the Times Olympic Facility, don a uniform and work with the press operators for one week to fully understand what it entails to run a crew and a massive printing press.
What angers the rank and file the most are the subtle messages that we are at fault for production slipping by 3,000 papers per hour, compared to last year, on the second shift. One needs to look no further than the machinery; we are experiencing breakdowns at an alarming rate, with no replacement parts available.
Just this week my crew has experienced ten web breaks, which eight were caused by half roll breakage, I realize maybe two or three of the web breaks will appear on next weeks production reports, as we boast having the best rolls per web break for the company.
On New Years Day the press I was attempting to run lost a motor that pumps the ink to the ink rail, which left one side of the page blank, time lost, over one hour. The crew across from me lost their dampener solution to one unit, which caused down time as the spray-bar was replaced. Our crew at the far end of the pressroom had a gear break, again causing additional down time and brought the papers per hour down for the shift.
These events are not isolated occurrences, this is a daily experience for the men and women working in the pressroom at Olympic, yet our managers take a blind eye to what is really happening.
One of my Tribune Boss’ said it best “If we could only have a little of the bonus money the Tribune executives are taking with them, we could get the equipment back to running order”.
Is it any wonder after thirty-nine years of attempting to organize the Los Angeles Times, the union was able to get into the Times again? If anyone has an award for best union organizing at a newspaper, I would like to nominate our Tribune Company Boss’ at Olympic for their efforts in bringing in the union.
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4 comments:
"Just this week my crew has experienced ten web breaks, which eight were caused by half roll breakage, I realize maybe two or three of the web breaks will appear on next weeks production reports, as we boast having the best rolls per web break for the company."
You should be ashamed of yourselves! Didn't yo momma tell you that it is wrong to lie!!!
No one would dare lie at the Olympic Plant!
We have our own definitions for the press start time, web breaks, and paster breaks, from our colleagues working at other newspapers.
Dare you say anything about the on going lieing and lack of parts and maintenance at the Times.How could any of these so called leaders lead.The bias and favoritism have been a daily part of these executives at Olympic plant, just get numbers.They are a bunch,scared of their collective shadows.To bad they used Mark Kurtich as their scapgoat for the union getting in.Zell should release the whole lieing bunch v.p. on down!
Ed let me give you some free advise!
Quit smoking
Do not blog on company time
Leave your cell phone in your locker
Stop looking for attention
If you can do at least one of the above you could get
3,000 more papers per hour! How you remain a Press
Operator is amazing.
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