Latest turn in the incessant march by newspapers to rid themselves of unionized staffers: the Chicago Sun-Times is getting rid of its entire photography staff. All of them. It’ll use freelancers instead. Poynter writes about it.
Closer to home, the Mercury News (and the MediaNews Group-owned newspaper’s Bay Area “editions”) has done a similar union staff dump as it prepares to sell its San Jose newspaper headquarters and transfer production work there elsewhere. And the work that those 118 unionized production workers who received layoff letters in April did in San Jose? It’ll be done at non-unionized shops in Concord and Walnut Creek.
Noted: For those with short memories, the Chronicle pulled something similar in 2009, jettisoning more than 200 union production jobs.
