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Money problems have forced a fresh round of week-long furloughs at the Arizona Republic.
Publisher John Zidich announced the mandatory, unpaid week off for most employees in an e-mail today published on Gannett Blog:
“This decision was extremely difficult but made necessary by a challenging second quarter,” Zidich wrote. “In April, a limited furlough was put in place. Today’s action would be for the remainder of the organization. This, quite frankly, was an option I had hoped to avoid but top line revenues remain short of where they were a year ago. It’s important to know that this is not an issue of declining Republic Media market share. There simply is not as much media (sic) dollars available in the market.”
Zidich adds that he’s “sorry” that the furloughs will create hardships for employees and their families.
Bad as it will be for some, (we know others who manage to make it sound like fun), it beats another mass layoff.
