If you have a workforce that you think is costing you too much but isn’t working at-will, how do you get rid of it so that you can replace it with a cheaper, compliant workforce? You ratchet up the chicken shit. Now I don’t know if that’s what management at the Milwaukee Star Tribune has in mind, but is sure looks pretty obvious to me.

From this morning’s New York Times:

About a month ago, The Star Tribune in Minneapolis let it be known that, as a cost-cutting effort, free copies of the newspaper would no longer be broadly available around the newsroom.

Instead, the staff was offered an electronic edition of the paper - an exact digital reproduction of the printed version, no less – that they could access online. Those who insisted on seeing the fruits of the their labors in its physical form were told that they could purchase copies for 25 cents, half the retail cost, from boxes around the office.

Strange, right? But it’s still the kind of lame, seneseless action you’d expect from a management type. But then senseless turned ugly.

Last Monday, the going got weirder. Star Tribune reporters who came to work and booted up were greeted by the following message from Steve Alexander, senior vice president for circulation, who had been spending time researching the program’s introduction:

During the first week that the additional on-site racks were in service, 43 percent of the Star Tribunes removed from those racks were not paid for. For the second week the rate was 41 percent. This is called ‘pilferage’ in our business; but put more plainly, it is theft, pure and simple.

Mr. Alexander proceeded apace: Taking more than one newspaper from a rack when you have only inserted enough money for one paper is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Employees who steal newspapers will put their jobs at risk. There is zero tolerance when it comes to stealing from our company, even if it is a 25-cent newspaper.

Do suppose Alexander (The Barely Competent) is going to post security cameras on the boxes? Hire guards? Clap his hands together in glee as senior reporters who Don’t have to put up with the chicken shit! walk out?

Any bloggers in Milwaukee been contacted about freelancing lately?

My Soundtrack: Blue Skies by The Young Republic on WOXY.