Merc workers plan protest of job cutsBy G.W. Schulz
UPDATE! I failed to include a date for the protest first time around. It will be this Tuesday, June 26.
Employees of the embattled San Jose Mercury News announced earlier today that they intended to picket the newspaper over expected job cuts at the peninsula daily.
The jobs of 30 ad-production workers will immediately be affected, and editorial and composing room employees were already facing planned cuts.
The paper also announced today that it would be getting rid of its Perspective section, which appears on Sundays, due to “relatively low readership.” We reported recently that the Chronicle has been considering a similar cut to its Insight section, from which longtime editor Jim Finefrock was recently let go.
Production-side employees from the Merc represented by the Northern California Media Workers Union planned a protest for today stating in a press release that the cuts would only help to expand the newspaper empire of William "Lean" Dean Singleton, head honcho for MediaNews Group, which leads a consortium of newspaper companies that owns the Merc along with just about every other major daily in the Bay Area save for the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Merc’s union complained that some MediaNews Group positions had already been outsourced to India from Contra Costa County and Pleasanton.
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