Two more indications that it's coming soon

Readers confirm that managers had firing school meeting today. And I'm told that two offices in the fourth floor hallway have had their windows papered over for "privacy."

Those offices have been used in the past for delivering the news.
Windows were papered over then, too.

Technical issue: Posting anonymous comments

It has come to my attention that the anti-spam captcha system is hiccuping. Others say that if you try to post a comment as "anonymous" the system rejects the first time to fill in the captcha with an error message that says to try again. The second try works. I've just tried it and found that to be the case. I am not nearly knowledgeable about the technology to know why this is happening or to fix it. It looks like many of you figured this out or are not having the problem, given the number of comments. But if you do get the error message, try again.

Was there a 'firing school' this morning?

One comment from yesterday said there was to be a manager-only meeting today that would lay out the script for the process. Can anyone confirm that it happened?

Another preparation suggestion to consider as we wait

A reader suggests:

One more thing to put on your to-do list:
Go to any supervisor you trust and ask for a PRINTED letter of recommendation. Today. Do it now.

To which I'll add: If you're on LinkedIn, this might be a good day to ask for recommendations there, too.

Shooting down rumor about Friday

A reader writes that a high level editor says the layoffs will not
happen Friday. For what it's worth.

Useful info on COBRA

A former DMN-er writes:

The economic recovery act passed earlier this year provides COBRA premium assistance for laid-off workers.

Here's a link where folks can find out if it makes sense for them:
http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/cobra.html

Today's unsourced rumor

A reader writes:
"I'm hearing layoffs could start Friday."

Has anyone else heard this?

Pay cuts May 1

Letter from Decherd today:

On Tuesday, the Board of Directors approved my recommendation to reduce my base salary by 20 percent and the base salaries of other Management Committee members
by 15 percent, effective immediately. In addition, all full-time employees making more than $25,000 per year will have reductions in base salary as follows:

Base Salary % Reduction
$25,000 and under 0 %
$25,001 - $74,999 2.5 %
$75,000 - $102,499 5.0 %
$102,500 - $149,999 7.5 %
$150,000 - $225,000 10 %
Over $225,000 15 %

These changes will be effective starting in the payroll cycles on or near May 1. The annual savings represented by these reductions exceed $10 million.

Also:

To cushion the impact of the wage cuts, all impacted employees will receive three additional personal days per calendar year, effective at the time of the salary reductions.

So no furloughs at this point? There may be another shoe to drop, though. The letter ends: "I will communicate with you again soon."

Rumor of the day: cuts early next week

A reader says the word came down from an editor: Layoffs Monday or Tuesday of next week. Anybody else heard this?

Preparation suggestions

I asked for them in my last post and got a couple of good ones that I'll pull out here so they don't get lost in the comments.

One person wrote:

I would recommend setting your email to forward to a private account. I only set mine up to auto-respond when I left.

I just tested it, my @dallasnews.com address will still tell you how to reach me. I have been gone for two years. Had I set it up to forward instead...

What you need to do to follow this suggestion is set up a "rule' in Outlook to forward your e-mail to another account, such as a gmail, yahoo or other private e-mail address.

Another person added:

Make sure it's a server rule, vs. a client rule.

But I don't know what that means.

One more suggestion:

YMMV on email still working after you leave. I have been gone for over two years and my regular web email and VPN login access was cut off within a week of departing, however my Blackberry continued to still have access to DMN email and calenders for another 6 months until I wiped the device. For all I know, I would still have access at this point had I not done that.

I would also recommend setting up a voice mail message on your phone alerting callers of alternate ways to reach you. My DMN extension is still active, 2+ years after departing, still with a message alerting callers that I no longer work there and how they can reach me at my new job.

Now that we've told the company about this, it may be that they will be more alert about cutting off access. But we all know that technology is not what Belo does best.

If you have additional useful suggestions, please put in your comment.