SI Lays off remaining 6 photographers.

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Comments

  • SamSam Registered Users Posts: 7,419 Major grins
    edited January 29, 2015
    ian408 wrote: »
    Of course. But when looking at costs, you have recognize the impact benefits have on the bottom line. Healthcare is a huge part of that as are travel, gear, office, and so much more.

    As I said................I agree with you., and I believe many jobs will be negativity affected by the Obama unfordable health care that was passed without reading or understanding as well as the outright bribes.:-)

    That said I still think that any increased health care costs were not the primary reason for the decision of SI to drop the photography department.

    They will still get pictures and they will be good enough, and more importantly CHEAPER.

    To go one step farther if SI were to offer free media passes to qualified amateurs in exchange for photos they might be able to get their photos for FREE!!

    Sam
  • mercphotomercphoto Registered Users Posts: 4,550 Major grins
    edited January 29, 2015
    Bingo, Sam. This has nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with simply lowering the costs of photos. I will bet you'll see most all photos locally sourced now rather than SI sending their staffers on airplanes with a night or two in a hotel to cover a game.
    Bill Jurasz - Mercury Photography - Cedar Park, TX
    A former sports shooter
    Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
    My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
  • ian408ian408 Administrators Posts: 21,904 moderator
    edited January 29, 2015
    mercphoto wrote: »
    This has nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with simply lowering the costs of photos.

    And eliminating the cost of salary and benefits don't constitute lowering the cost of photo?
    Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
  • jheftijhefti Registered Users Posts: 734 Major grins
    edited January 29, 2015
    SI is just doing what every other similar business is doing. I understand why. SI uses my work frequently so I know what they pay. I'm quite sure it's a lot cheaper to buy my images a la carte than to pay the SI shooter who sat next to me at the World Series last fall. There are so many talented sports PJs available that it's really a buyer's market. SI will manage to produce great sports imagery for the foreseeable future.

    As an employer and as someone in the health care sector, I'll just say the health insurance has been a major cost burden for a very long time. The ACA has had no real impact on the insurance costs that I pay for my employees. The health care system in this country is a mess--speaking as an insider--and it's unfortunate that we can't learn from the many countries that do a much better job at a far lower cost.
  • SamSam Registered Users Posts: 7,419 Major grins
    edited January 29, 2015
    ian408 wrote: »
    And eliminating the cost of salary and benefits don't constitute lowering the cost of photo?

    Ian,

    :bash:bash:bash:bash:bash

    SI has over 10,000 employees. If the OUNCA (Obama Unaffordable No Care Act) was a major or even a carefully evaluated part of thier decision to eliminate only 6 employees I would be more than a little surprised.

    If one is considering the negative economic effects of a policy / tax or program like OUNCA, which is global in nature, a lot more than 6 people would have been shown the door.

    This looks like a management decision concluding a particular department, photography, was costing more than the benefits it provided. While photographers obviously think differently only time will tell if this was a good decision for them or not.

    Sam
  • ian408ian408 Administrators Posts: 21,904 moderator
    edited January 29, 2015
    Sam wrote: »
    Ian,

    :bash:bash:bash:bash:bash

    SI has over 10,000 employees. If the OUNCA (Obama Unaffordable No Care Act) was a major or even a carefully evaluated part of thier decision to eliminate only 6 employees I would be more than a little surprised.

    If one is considering the negative economic effects of a policy / tax or program like OUNCA, which is global in nature, a lot more than 6 people would have been shown the door.

    This looks like a management decision concluding a particular department, photography, was costing more than the benefits it provided. While photographers obviously think differently only time will tell if this was a good decision for them or not.

    Sam

    Whether it's 6 or 10,000, I guess we'll have to disagree on what goes into decision making process.
    Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
  • mercphotomercphoto Registered Users Posts: 4,550 Major grins
    edited January 30, 2015
    Sam wrote: »
    Ian,

    :bash:bash:bash:bash:bash

    SI has over 10,000 employees. If the OUNCA (Obama Unaffordable No Care Act) was a major or even a carefully evaluated part of thier decision to eliminate only 6 employees I would be more than a little surprised.

    Does SI really have 10,000+ employees? Or is that the sum of SI plus its parent and sibling companies? I'm just struggling to figure out how a magazine employs that many people.
    Bill Jurasz - Mercury Photography - Cedar Park, TX
    A former sports shooter
    Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
    My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
  • ian408ian408 Administrators Posts: 21,904 moderator
    edited January 30, 2015
    mercphoto wrote: »
    Does SI really have 10,000+ employees? Or is that the sum of SI plus its parent and sibling companies? I'm just struggling to figure out how a magazine employs that many people.

    I was curious about this yesterday. I looked around and found that Time, Inc. owns SI. In 2013, Time, Inc. had around 8000 employees but it's hard to know what the distribution is among their various magazines (~70). They have a dozen or so operating companies plus offices throughout the world.

    So 10,000 is probably not accurate. lol3.gif
    Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
  • SamSam Registered Users Posts: 7,419 Major grins
    edited January 30, 2015
    ian408 wrote: »
    I was curious about this yesterday. I looked around and found that Time, Inc. owns SI. In 2013, Time, Inc. had around 8000 employees but it's hard to know what the distribution is among their various magazines (~70). They have a dozen or so operating companies plus offices throughout the world.

    So 10,000 is probably not accurate. lol3.gif

    Ian,

    I did my best to find the number of employees and I did have trouble finding that info.

    What I did find was here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sports-illustrated

    I do agree it does seem high but it's all I can find.

    Even if the number is half I stand by my analysis. :D

    If you can show where any of the decision makers are willing to go on the record saying that the cost of health care was even 10% of the decision making process I will change my mind.

    Think about this: If you owned a company and were in the process of laying off employees, never a popular thing, and could shift the blame onto a very unpopular entity, like the gov, wouldn't you take full advantage of that?

    It's "NOT MY FAULT" defensive explanation. :D

    Sam
  • ian408ian408 Administrators Posts: 21,904 moderator
    edited January 30, 2015
    Sam wrote: »
    Ian,

    I did my best to find the number of employees and I did have trouble finding that info.

    What I did find was here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sports-illustrated

    I do agree it does seem high but it's all I can find.

    Even if the number is half I stand by my analysis. :D

    If you can show where any of the decision makers are willing to go on the record saying that the cost of health care was even 10% of the decision making process I will change my mind.

    Think about this: If you owned a company and were in the process of laying off employees, never a popular thing, and could shift the blame onto a very unpopular entity, like the gov, wouldn't you take full advantage of that?

    It's "NOT MY FAULT" defensive explanation. :D

    Sam

    Sam, you're a pretty reasonable guy but I don't understand why you insist I am "blaming" any specific thing. I'm not. The bottom line is any company making the decision to make a reduction in their workforce looks at many things when making that decision. Period. Many factors go into the decision one of which was the cost of benefits. Don't read more into that than is there. Please. So does how you account for the expense of an employee vs the cost of buying a photograph-that's a whole different discussion.

    So you understand where I'm coming from, I have worked on making decisions that resulted in layoffs on several occasions. I am familiar with the process. As far as blame goes, I don't know you can blame the cost of doing business on any one thing (like healthcare) when the industry as a whole has been in a decline for a while. Especially when you're talking about getting rid of 6 people out of 8000.

    I used Time's own website to get the information on operating companies, offices, and magazines. I used news reports for 2013 when Time, Inc. laid off 6% of it's 8000 person workforce. I also looked at LinkedIn but discounted it because there's no way a magazine, any magazine, has that many employees-think about it. If they did, magazines would cost on the order of 10's of dollars and contain hundreds of articles a staff 10,000 people would represent. Finally, I looked the listing for Time, Inc. which also lists its employee count as 10,001+ which made more sense (SI is part of TI) but that still seemed high.
    Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
  • toragstorags Registered Users Posts: 4,615 Major grins
    edited January 30, 2015
    So how does National Geographic handle it?

    I've heard their photogs are low paid are they also independent contractors?
    Rags
  • ian408ian408 Administrators Posts: 21,904 moderator
    edited January 31, 2015
    torags wrote: »
    So how does National Geographic handle it?

    I've heard their photogs are low paid are they also independent contractors?

    No idea what the pay scale is but I think they contract.
    Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
  • jonh68jonh68 Registered Users Posts: 2,711 Major grins
    edited January 31, 2015
    Considering you can find blogs of photographers that have been published in NG I am assuming they contract out.
    torags wrote: »
    So how does National Geographic handle it?

    I've heard their photogs are low paid are they also independent contractors?
  • Brett1000Brett1000 Registered Users Posts: 819 Major grins
    edited February 9, 2015
    Sam wrote: »
    As I said................I agree with you., and I believe many jobs will be negativity affected by the Obama unfordable health care that was passed without reading or understanding as well as the outright bribes.:-)

    That said I still think that any increased health care costs were not the primary reason for the decision of SI to drop the photography department.

    They will still get pictures and they will be good enough, and more importantly CHEAPER.

    To go one step farther if SI were to offer free media passes to qualified amateurs in exchange for photos they might be able to get their photos for FREE!!

    Sam
    mercphoto wrote: »
    Bingo, Sam. This has nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with simply lowering the costs of photos. I will bet you'll see most all photos locally sourced now rather than SI sending their staffers on airplanes with a night or two in a hotel to cover a game.


    yes, blaming "Obamacare" for laying off photographers is ridiculous.
    The steep decline in magazine advertising and print circulation (just like in the newspapers) has something to do with it.
    Coinciding with all the wannabe pro photogs with their new camera gear!
  • Gary752Gary752 Registered Users Posts: 934 Major grins
    edited February 16, 2015
    I think this all boils down to Cost per Image. It's cheaper to contract out a photographer to cover an event that lives in that particular area, than to send a staff photographer that is going to have to fly, or drive many hours to get there. In some cases, some publications buy stock images to cut costs. Not long ago, Creative Live had a workshop on Landscape Photography, and the guy presenting the workshop was a photographer specializing in national parks. He travels to the national parks at different times of the year and photographs stuff off the beaten path that you normally don't see, along with the normal stuff, then sells it through a stock agency. Joel Grimes stated in one of his workshops that a magazine seen some of his images that he had posted on his website, to show what he was working on, contacted him about running them in a future issue. As far as using the excuse that insurance was the reason for the layoff, I doubt it. Sure, if the company owns all the photography equipment, they might be able to eliminate the insurance on the added coverage for the equipment during travel time. But employee insurance isn't going to change much at all by laying off 6 people.

    GaryB
    GaryB
    “The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!” - Ansel Adams
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