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)