Thread regarding United States Layoffs layoffs

The Los Angeles Times Guild bargaining committee told union members Monday that it was still negotiating with the company over 56 proposed layoffs, which primarily affect the paper’s digital editors.

The company stunned staff members when it first announced the layoffs last week. Executive editor Kevin Merida told newsroom employees that the cuts were a response to “persistent economic headwinds.” In the union’s update to members, the bargaining committee shared that it had received a confidential briefing about the Los Angeles Times’ finances.

“We can’t disclose the details, but suffice it to say that the company is facing strong economic headwinds,” the committee wrote.

As proposed by the company, the layoffs will include all six of the union’s audio producers as well as 35 of the union’s 61 multiplatform editors. The latter group includes copy editors; audience engagement editors; and news desk editors, who manage the paper’s homepage and news alerts.

Multiplatform editors make up one of the most diverse groups of journalists within the union. The Guild shared a layoff analysis with members Monday that found that the cuts would disproportionately affect Asian American and Latino staff.

“The company wants to blame the contract’s seniority protections for the disparate impact on people of color, without acknowledging that it had many other options — including working with the Guild to develop a more equitable plan, first offering newsroom-wide buyouts, and cutting the growing ranks of upper management,” the bargaining committee wrote in its update.

Los Angeles Times spokesperson Hillary Manning wrote in an email that the cuts affect comparable percentages of union and nonunion members and include members of senior management. She added that the union’s contract states that people who were hired most recently will be the first to be laid off, and recent hires have been more diverse than those made in the past.

“These changes have slowed our momentum in diversifying our newsroom, but we remain committed to diversity and inclusion as core values of our organization,” Manning wrote.

The Los Angeles Times’ layoffs are part of more than 17,000 job cuts made in the media industry so far this year — a record high. More people have lost their job in the first five months of 2023 than the same period in 2020, when 16,750 cuts were announced, according to global outplacement and business coaching firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Other news outlets that have undergone layoffs this year include The Washington Post, NPR and BuzzFeed News.