Posted by chicagomedia.org on December 11, 2008 at 16:03:22:
Ex-Tribune staffers get the booby prize -- severance payments are suspended during Chapter 11.
That includes people who took a voluntary buyout. They're now creditors, and fairly far down the list, at that. The New York Times found this note in an internal Tribune Company website: "All ongoing severance payments, deferred compensation and other payments to former employees have been discontinued and will be the subject of later proceedings before the court."
Translation -- those people are now unsecured creditors. More and more, it appears that Monday�s Chapter 11 filing was about protecting the interests of the senior lenders. Those are the big banks who made the nearly $13 billion Sam Zell-led buyout happen almost exactly a year ago. They're ahead of almost everybody else to be paid - including ex-employees who thought they'd be getting regular checks for a while. As News Blues notes, that also includes freelancers who've been waiting to get paid. They're really at the bottom of the list.
(Radio-Info's Tom Taylor)