Washington Post Offers Fourth Round Of Buyouts

 

WASHINGTON, DC (March 25, 2009) – At a noon meeting today senior editors of The Washington Post learned that members of certain departments are being asked to take buyouts so the Post can try to avoid layoffs as the newspaper continues to lose money.

Rumors circulated yesterday that the Post would be making another round of voluntary buyouts, only this time only certain employees in specific departments would be eligible. Those who qualify – over 50 years old and with more than five years of employment, either full-time or part-time and averaging at least 22.5 hours per week – received the buyout offers today. Those receiving the offer have 45 days to consider taking the buyout.

The package is reportedly a lump-sum payment of up to one and a half times the employee's salary, based on years of service.

A memo from Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said that the newspaper needed to achieve "meaningful staff reductions" to avoid layoffs, Politico reported today.

Yesterday's memo says that buyout offers are being made to members of the production and circulation departments, but members of the news, advertising, and information technology departments may receive the offer also.

More than 100 Post workers took buyouts last year in the fourth round of buyouts at the paper since 2003.

The Post's buyout plan will allow the company to "offer eligible employees the opportunity to retire with enhanced benefits and, at the same time, provide us with an important opportunity to restructure our business and reduce our costs," Weymouth wrote in the memo.

"While we expect to be able to achieve meaningful staff reductions [through buyouts] ... I am sorry to say that we cannot rule out layoffs in the future," she wrote.

In early February the managing editor for multimedia for Washingtonpost.com, Tom Kennedy, retired from the Post's Web site operation which has been based in Arlington, VA. Today Weymouth said the Post's Web site staff is expected to move to the newspaper's District of Columbia building by the end of this year as part of the consolidation and staff reduction process.

 

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