I recently had extensive dental surgery and am currently out of commission. The following is by Chronicle Publisher Nick Barbaro.
It is a letter responding to a City Council staff member’s comments at a party. (Publisher’s note: Said staffer was very stand-up in responding; we’ve since made up.) I asked Barbaro if we could run it because I feel it articulates a lot of citizens’ and business-owners’ problems with the city and with developments like the one proposed for Northcross. We also believe that if we are going to criticize others, we want to make our own practices clear and public.
Names have been omitted because they are in so many ways beside the point.
– Louis Black, editor, The Austin Chronicle
Dear _______________,
I don’t think we’ve ever met, but a mutual friend called to tell me that you were at a party the other night, speculating negatively about our labor policies at the Chronicle – specifically, questioning whether, in fact, there’s any real difference between us and Wal-Mart when it comes to pay issues.
So I’m sending you this, partly because I don’t like it that you’re gossiping around town about our imagined lousy labor practices without having any facts, and, more than that, because I think your skepticism reflects an important, fundamental misconception at City Hall about the value of small and independent businesses to this city.
I work with a lot of small businesses (and their employees), and, by and large, I think we’re excellent employers and good corporate citizens. And I think we all feel that – as is demonstrated most recently in the Northcross case that touched off your speculation – we don’t get the same respect at City Hall or, when needed, the same access to city staff as our big-name, national competitors do.
But anyway, on to the employment stats:
The Chronicle is not a huge, or hugely profitable, business, and frankly, I wish we could pay everyone more than we do. But we do what we can, and providing a humane workplace and taking care of our employees is one of our primary business goals. I hope you’ll find the stats below satisfactory, and I think you’ll find they compare pretty well to Wal-Mart’s.
But I’m not presenting them because I think we’re so great – actually, I’d guess we’re pretty much standard, providing what an employer ought to be expected to provide as a living wage and the kind of decent jobs that your typical small business provides Austin citizens.
So when a – let’s be honest here – brain-dead redevelopment plan for an ailing mall gets a clean ride through the development process and every favorable consideration in circumventing such inconveniences as neighborhood plans, design guidelines, and impact studies, is it any wonder that surrounding neighbors and small and indie businesses feel betrayed?
This is not the place to go into everything I think has been wrong with the Northcross process. I’m sure we’ll each be doing our own smell test on that one over the next weeks. Speaking as a small-business man, I resent that my city government appears to be doing personal favors to give competitive advantage to a company that is not a good corporate citizen.
Because there are differences in corporate policy. And they do make a difference. I resent, for instance, that my, and my employees’, health-insurance premiums have to subsidize the health-care costs of Wal-Mart’s uninsured and underinsured employees. City Hall can’t do anything about that, but it could do a lot more than it has done to make Wal-Mart at least play by the same rules as the indie businesses it preys on.
Nick Barbaro
Publisher
The Austin Chronicle
Austin Chronicle employment stats:
• We have 74 employees; eight of them are part-time.
• The average tenure of an employee is 8.25 years.
• The lowest hourly wage is $10.50.
• The median hourly wage is a little more than $20.
• No guarantees, but we have managed for each of the last 10-15 years to give three seasonal bonuses, each averaging about a week’s pay or more.
• We pay 100% of the health insurance, dental, and long-term disability for any employee who works more than 30 hours a week.
• We, of course, have paid sick, vacation, and personal time.
• We have a 401(k) plan in which we match contributions dollar-for-dollar up to 5% of an employee’s salary.
We do have a lot of freelancers and other contract labor; the delivery drivers are contract labor and therefore get no insurance, 401(k), Supplemental Security Income deductions, etc. Their individual pay varies week to week based on the number of drops, issues, and pages that week; but the bigger routes typically earn up to $300 for a three- to six-hour day.
This article appears in December 15 • 2006.