The Mercury News’ management and union reached a contract agreement today that means that only 27 – instead of 69 – staffers will be laid off by Tuesday. A number of reporters have already left the paper in recent weeks, so the layoff number in the editorial department may be closer to 15.
That’s still bad news for the reporters and editors of the paper; no one yet knows who will be fired and for what reason. They still have to wait by their phones on Tuesday between 8 am and 10 am to hear if they have lost their jobs.
The management also dropped its request to create a two-tier wage system at the Mercury. They had hoped to pay new reporters about $40,000 a year instead of the current prevailing wage of $60,000.
But management did win the right to use content from other Media News papers and to combine some advertising operations.
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