NEW YORK, May 10 (DPI) — A modest but somewhat clumsy PR effort by unionized journalists of The New York Times did little to help their cause as Youtube.com viewer comments unanimously ridiculed them.
The Times’s 1,100 journalists – among the best in the world, but whose numbers have eroded in recent years — are trying to salvage their traditional pension plan. So-called defined-benefit plans are still a basic benefit for public school teachers and police officers, but today they are a rare and extremely valuable benefit for private-sector workers.
Several longtime NY Times journalists, represented by the Newspaper Guild of New York, appeared in at least two videos posted on YouTube in recent weeks.
A video posted April 13 appeared to be geared to fellow guild members, rather than to a public audience, while a second, posted this week, seemed more an appeal for support from the general public.
The best point in either video — that former CEO Janet Robinson received a severance of $24.4 million, about 80% of the cost of a benefit for 1,100 employees — was buried at the end of a nearly 6-minute series of bland, non-confrontational statements by longtime reporters and columnists. (None were the paper’s best known, since celebrity journalists generally augment their newspaper pay through speaking and other writing ventures, and thus have less at stake and less interest in squaring off with management.)
It’s a predicament for both sides. Defined-benefit pension plans have become difficult for employers to justify, for many reasons. The basic reason is that competitors no longer offer them, so they don’t have to themselves.
Moreover, investment returns in recent years have thrown old assumptions of plan funding out the window, making the employer’s promise much more expensive. Whereas a generation ago employers could fund 10 or 20 cents of every pension benefit dollar, and make up the remaining 80 cents on investment income over time, the assumptions now are closer to 40-45 cents of every dollar, especially as people continue to retire at 65.
And pensions must last much longer, as actuarial assumptions project people living many years longer than they did only a decade or two ago.
Still, anonymous public posts in response to the videos aren’t supportive. Virually all reader replies have been critical, angry, even cruel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTw0B_lmIHM&feature=relmfu
The journalists’ cause wasn’t helped by some poor messaging: One columnist speaking in the video appeared with his salary on the screen ($130,000), highlighting an old perception gap: People, especially older people, working in Manhattan regard a $130,000-a-year salary as a modest sum for a professional; the rest of the world is stunned by the mere suggestion that that amount is anything but modest.
In fact, not a single one of the 185 comments linked to the April 13 video was sympathetic to the modest cause of what remains of NY Times newsroom personnel.
Most focused on how the rest of the private sector has been long left for dead in retirement by employers and how small business people barely get by, with no benefits. A few more harped about how the paper’s left-wing views somehow contributed to the broad decades-long shift to riskier 401(k) and other defined contribution plans, reflecting a kind of irrational anger. A sampling:
“Earth to the writers of the New York Times – Welcome to the real world.”
“Poor little Communists. Live by massive unsustainable fantasy financial programs, die by massive unsustainable fantasy financial programs. Welcome to the world you lunatics helped ruin for the rest of us.”
“Please strike. It will explicitly show how easily we can get along without you.”
“This is a clever tongue-in-cheek video. To the Times reporters who acted along with the joke, and making the considerable effort to appear as sincere but clueless dufuses, I say “here, here, your acting chops will serve you well in a second career!” ”
“How do I know they’re acting? Because NO ONE in New York could actually be that stupid, right?”
“Thought it was a parody at first with the carnival music in the background. Also may not want to use a quote from your own commercial to tout how good the publication is.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NE4lLKaTY9k#!
The guild reports in recent days that progress has been made in reaching some kind of modified settlement, in which the journalists would continue to receive either a hybrid form of retirement benefit, or perhaps a scaled-back traditional pension, rather than its outright elimination.