THE cost cutting seems to be picking up steam at S.I. Newhouse Jr. media empire Condé Nast.
Yesterday, the glitzy publisher of Vanity Fair, Vogue, Glamour and The New Yorker told its 3,000 employees that starting July 1 their pension plans would be frozen.
“The value of the pension benefit that you have accrued as of June 30 will not increase or decrease,” Jill Bright, Condé’s head of human resources, told employees in a memo yesterday morning.
To take away the sting, Condé said it was going to kick in a bit more on the match to employees’ 401(k) retirement fund, raising the company contribution.
Under the revised plan, Condé will now pay 66 2/3 cents for every dollar an employee contributes up to 6 percent of employees’ salaries, up from 25 cents for every dollar.
The changes to the company’s retirement plans come as Condé, a company once known for its extravagance, has effectively skipped pay increases for most employees for the second year in a row.
Condé had already begun tightening its pension plan last year, but stopped short of a full “freeze.”
Said a spokeswoman on the latest changes, “It allows employees to take greater advantage of their own saving strategy. As part of this plan we are making a change and freezing the current pension plans. Last year we did suspend the crediting of additional years of service for existing employees and closed the plan to new hires.”
Downtown
If the pension freeze wasn’t enough, Condé employees were also grappling yesterday with word that the company is considering trading in its Times Square digs for a piece of 1 World Trade Center.
According to a published report, Condé and the Port Authority have been discussing the possibility of the company moving to the tower that is currently under construction.
And while some suggested that Condé Nasties would find comfort in shopping at the Tiffany and Century 21 department store nearby, insiders weren’t buying it.
“I might shop at Cen tury 21,” said one in sider, “but most of the people here would only do it incognito.”
Indeed, while the off- price store is pop ular among New Yorkers, it may not be exactly the sort of place Vogue Editrix Anna Wintour might want to be spotted in.
“It’s so depressing,” said one insider. “Who would want to work down there?”
Added another: “I wish we’d go to West SoHo, where Viacom and all those Internet companies are going.”
One source said the report of a possible move surprised many insiders because with the closing of Gourmet, Domino, Portfolio and other titles last year, Condé had plenty of room at its 4 Times Square headquarters, which the publisher moved into in 1999.
A Condé Nast spokeswoman said the company had nothing to say.
Peace pact
Newsday and the Teamsters are believed to have reached a verbal agreement on a new contract that will subject most of the newspaper’s employees to a 5 percent pay cut and leave that lower salary in place for three years.
Newsday’s drivers would be subject to a 10 percent pay cut.
George Tedeschi, president of the Graphic Communica tions International of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said that union members are scheduled to vote on the new pact June 6.
At Newsday, the GCI represents everyone from journalists and photographers to truck drivers and pressmen.
The union had been maintaining that Newsday recorded an operating profit even though James Dolan, CEO of Newsday owner Cablevision, insisted the Long Island daily had an operating loss of $12.6 million.
In the previous contract proposal, Newsday pressed for a longer work week, the elimination of the fifth week of vacation for longtime employees and steeper pay cuts, including 10 percent for most employees and 15 percent for drivers.
However, that pact was overwhelmingly rejected by rank-and-file members after officials from the Teamsters’ Washington headquarters got involved and urged members to reject the plan.
Tedeschi was dispatched from Washington to oversee the latest round of negotiations, but even he is not sure how members will vote on the latest proposal.
“It could go either way at this point,” he said. “We know the industry is having a tough time, but on a cash in-cash out basis, we think Newsday is making money.”
Salmon blues
Jared Kushner‘s New York Observer has seen a fair degree of turnover since Peter Kaplan left as editor and Kyle Pope was installed in the top job as part of an effort to move away from politics and focus more on culture, media and real estate.
Yesterday, Pope unveiled a surprising new hire, Christian Lorentzen, who joins as a senior editor after editing the “Readings” section of Harper’s Magazine.
Lorentzen’s hire follows the departure of Tyler Thoreson, who is bailing as Web editor of the salmon- colored paper not long after being hired by Pope.
Thomas McGeve ran, at one time Kap lan’s No. 2, exited last November after running the paper on an in terim basis. Josh Benson, the pa per’s executive ed itor, followed McGeveran. The pair are now launching a Web startup.
Other top masthead departures this year included other carryovers from the Kaplan era, including Hillary Frey, who had been the arts and culture editor and is now at Politico.com, and Joe Pompeo, the managing editor who last month jumped to Henry Blodget‘s Business Insider to head up the Web site’s media-focused operation.
Also gone are Meredith Bryan, a feature writer who jumped to O, the Oprah Magazine, and Jimmy Vielkind, a political reporter who returned to the Albany Times Union.keith.kelly@nypost.com