Bloomberg’s mass firing of 40 people in its news operation last month — plus 10 from its TV operation — was only the latest in a slow drain of veterans from the organization over the past 18 months, according to a number of ex-Bloomberg staffers.
Sources say that since 2012, dozens of its longtime employees, often with 10 to 20 years of experience, have left under duress, and many of the cases have landed in court.
“The targets are the expensive old-timers — those who joined Bloomberg News 10 years ago or more,” said one veteran who went to court after being given the old heave-ho. He asked not be identified due to a confidentiality settlement.
“We are being replaced by cheaper people with less experience as Bloomberg News moves back to its ‘roots’ and heavily into the ‘First Word’ business that basically requires very little journalism experience. It’s all about the money.”
Next week, the latest court case involving a dismissed Bloomberg journalist is scheduled to get underway in the French labor court.
Adria Cimino said she was terminated in August 2013, after 10-1/2 years at the company, working out of its Paris bureau.
“My problems with the company started with my maternity leave in January 2011,” she told Media Ink. She said that just before returning, she was approached about working for the new First Word department, but opted not to do so.
She said she had a favorable midterm review in 2010, right before taking maternity leave. Despite not having worked for the second half of 2010, Cimino said certain scores were inexplicably lower when she received her full-year appraisal in early 2011.
She said her superiors said she was meeting expectations but also that she seemed to be “coasting” and she had fewer “wins,” “bests” and “influentials” than others. But when she complained that she had been unduly penalized in her employment review, she said the company retaliated and began narrowing its work-at-home privilege.
Upon her return, she also had begun working from home two days per week, which she said had been a common practice and was usually okayed on a year-to-year basis.
“I contacted an attorney in July 2012 and in August 2012 he sent Bloomberg a letter noting the contract issues and asking them to be corrected,” she said.
By November, 2012 her attorney filed a case in French labor court.
By March 2013, when the work-at-home was suppossed to be extended, the company said it would grant her only a two month extension.
On May 4, 2013, she took her case directly to the top, emailing Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler looking for an explanation.
Cimino said that on May 5, 2013, the European head of HR said her questions were merely a pretext to gather evidence for use in her court case against the company. The next day, May 6, 2013, she received a letter dated May 5 that said the company was commencing steps to fire her. and after mandatory period, She was officially axed in August.
Initially, she said that Bloomberg argued that she was not covered by a national collective bargaining agreement concerning journalists with the company insisting it was not primarily a news organization.
In fact, 85 percent of Bloomberg’s estimated $8.2 billion in revenues comes from its terminal sales to over 330,000 people in the financial markets worldwide and only 2,400 of its 15,500 employees worldwide work for Bloomberg News. But the court rejected the non-news organization argument.
A spokesman for Bloomberg L.P. declined to comment on the specific case but denied there is a systematic downsizing underway at Bloomberg News. He said the company plans to hire 100 people for Bloomberg News in the coming year.
On Tuesday in Washington, DC, 19-year veteran Bob Drummond, 57, left the company. “I was not fired,” he told Media Ink. “I’m proud of what we built at Bloomberg over many years. It was time for a change. I’ll leave it at that.”