Just one week to go before the Honolulu Advertiser is dismantled, while a dangerous information vacuum has caused extensive confusion that could endanger the health benefits of Advertiser employees.
On June 25, the Newspaper Guild advised Advertiser employees not to sign up for temporary health coverage offered by HA Management Inc., the company formed to operate the Advertiser until it is merged with the Star-Bulletin next week. Employees were told they qualify for COBRA coverage from Gannett after being released by the company on May 3 when the sale of the newspaper closed.
This advice was repeated on May 27.
Then on Friday, May 28, the Guild reversed its position and instead told Advertiser employees to immediately sign up for the HAMI health plan. Action had to be taken before the end of the day, the Guild notice said.
What a mess. It appears that management of both Oahu Publications and Gannett were less than helpful in providing clear and accurate information to Advertiser employees in a timely fashion. It’s really terrible that employees faced apparent legal deadlines without complete information about their rights.
Meanwhile, the future of the Hawaii Newspaper Guild is up in the air as the Newspaper Guild and its parent union, Communication Workers of America, study possible “structural realignment and merger of locals.”
You can also find the Hawaii Newspaper Guild on Facebook.
Here’s a sign of the times–On a visit to the Advertiser web site this morning, I clicked on “About us” down at the bottom of the main page. Here’s the result.
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That’s what it’s been like — utter confusion. No direction from the companies. The Guild is working on an alternative plan, I believe.
do you know what is going to happen to the honolulu advertiser archive? Will it all be wiped out?
Gannett and OPI, which includes HA management, seem to have a vendetta against the Advertiser staff. Every step on the way to killing of the Advertiser is combined with screwing the employees as much as possible!
HAMI itself is a shell game, a company set up so OPI can get out of its responsibilities to the Advertiser employees. Why else would they have an obviously contrived “3rd-party company” hire everyone? By this, they got out of a lot of benefits responsibilities to the employees they are terminating and are taking the opportunity to try to mess with their severances. OPI can claim clean hands.
The KITV story says it could be up to 6 months before anyone sees severance. Six months! That is not right, no matter how you cut it, to throw people out on the street like this while hurting them as much as possible on the way out the door.
If there is some business delay with severances, one company should step up to provide loans to help the employees who are NOT in any way at fault. COBRA and other benefits should be made clear and in writing. The employees are the victims of this corporate disaster, they should get as much help as they can get.
What OPI/HAMI and Gannett are doing is low-down dirty. That is not the way business should be done in Hawaii, but who is going to tell the story, and will people care?
I lost my job 5/11 and still have not received ANY Cobra info. My insurance runs out tonight. Nor have I received my severance yet. This from a major broadcast company here in town.
Research the COBRA laws, I believe the company has 30 days to tell the benefits company about your termination, then the company has 14 days to get you the COBRA info, then you have 60 days after that to decide to take COBRA, then it will be retroactive all the way to when your insurance ran out.
It really is too bad businesses just don’t seem to care about workers these days. Have you heard anything about the severance?
This happened to me too. I contacted the U.S. Department of Labor, which handles COBRA. I submitted an inquiry through their website and was called by a woman in the D.C. office. She followed up with my former employer and got the ball rolling. It was very helpful. I finally felt like someone was on my side.
On the Advertiser severance issue, the hangup is the grievance filed by each union to get the commitment in writing. The unions have offered to drop the grievances if they get an enforceable severance commitment in writing, something OPI still refuses to do; meanwhile, no severances are being paid until the grievances are settled through the arbitration process (therefore the six-month delay). Without a written deal, the unions need the grievance to enforce payment by Gannett, the only party with whom the unions had a written contract that included severance.
Chew ’em up and spit ’em out.
That’s “Hawaii’s Newspaper” run by the Evil Empire.
No class to the end.
OPI is just as guilty and in the end is the company that is murdering the competing paper for its own benefit. This is being handled far worse than the original SB shutdown, way more underhanded by parties.
More bad news on Tuesday from HA (Black’s shell company) giving final days of work AND telling all Tiser staff not picked up by OPI ( several hundred at least) that they will placed on paid leave and subject to recall until July 2nd when final checks are issued (under the WARN act) which means you cannot 1-file for unemployment, 2-accept a job offer from someone else, and perhaps the most important 3-this may keep you from getting Cobra
insurance.
Well, it appears that you CAN accept another job — you just won’t get the rest of the WARN payment if you do. As for the COBRA thing, I don’t know.
And HR has relayed advice from the unemployment office urging people to file their unemployment claims as soon as they are no longer physically working. Meaning, next week. The UI office may allow or disallow claims made during the period of “paid leave, subject to recall” — it’s going to be under review — but it’s better to get the claim in in case they allow it.