© 2024 St. Louis Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Post employees: company leaders should give back bonuses

St. Louis Post-Dispatch retiree, Richard P. Hughes, says the paper's parent company Lee Enterprises cut his health care benefits.
Alex King/St. Louis Public Radio
St. Louis Post-Dispatch retiree, Richard P. Hughes, says the paper's parent company Lee Enterprises cut his health care benefits.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch employees are demanding corporate leaders at the paper's parent company, Lee Enterprises, give back their bonuses.  They say CEO Mary Junck and CFO Carl Schmidt together collected $750,000 in bonuses at a time of layoffs at several Lee papers and cuts to retiree medical benefits.

Shannon Duffy, business representative for the United Media Guild -- the Post's largest union -- says the company's corporate leadership is out of touch with reality.

“I cannot believe that the board of directors thinks that taking a company when it's at $40 a share, borrowing almost a billion and a half dollars to buy Pulitzer and then tanking that company, deserves any kind of reward,” he said.

Lee emerged from bankruptcy early this year after buying the 134-year-old paper in 2005. Duffy says the United Media Guild is sending a petition to Lee's board of directors, calling for the bonuses to be invested in the company's employees.