Five newsroom employees are leaving the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the latest round of voluntary buyouts.
It’s the second such staffing cut this year, following an earlier buyout in which three newsroom employees departed. All eight workers were represented by the Milwaukee Newspaper Guild, and they came from six different newsroom departments. But because the departures were offset by a few new hires, the net reduction to our bargaining unit for the year to date is slightly less.
Both the spring and fall buyouts were available to workers throughout Journal Sentinel Inc. The Guild has not received any definitive information on how many workers from other parts of the company took either buyout.
No newsroom layoffs followed the spring buyout, and newsroom management has assured Guild leadership that no layoffs are planned to follow this buyout, either. Last year, a buyout fell short of a never-announced staff reduction target, and the company laid off two newsroom employees — including one from our bargaining unit — in addition to the four Guild-represented workers who took buyouts.