A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 , 2019
on hand to purchase essentials
for a few days?
You’ve been in a panic about
whether a recession is coming,
but what have you done to
prepare for when it arrives?
Because — now or later — there
will be another recession.
If you lose your job, how long
could you sustain your
household? Two months? One?
Or maybe things would become
dire right away. Think of your
emergency savings like the
sandbags used when a storm is
coming.
How’s paying off that credit
card coming? Get rid of your
student loans as quickly as
possible. A loss of income may be
less catastrophic if a lot of your
cash doesn’t have to be used to
service debt.
All the planning in the world
may not completely protect you
from a hurricane or a major
financial disaster. But giving
yourself some cover — like using
sunscreen to shield your skin —
can make the recovery a little less
painful.
[email protected]policy does not cover flooding.
Even if you’re not in a high-flood-
risk area, you might still need
protection. Just one inch of water
in a home can cost more than
$25,000 in damage, according to
the National Flood Insurance
Program (NFIP), which operates
under the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
If your community
participates in the NFIP, a policy
can be purchased through an
insurance agent. Even renters
should consider getting flood
insurance. The policy your
landlord carries probably does
not cover damage to your
personal possessions.
For information on flood
insurance, go to floodsmart.gov
or call NFIP’s Help Center at 800-
427 -4661.
What’s the state of your
emergency fund?
What if you need to evacuate
because of a hurricane, tornado
or wildfire? Would you have
enough in savings to cover a
week or two at a hotel? If a
natural disaster knocked out
power, do you have enough cashlife insurance or increasing the
value of the policy that you do
have in place. Do you even have a
will?
Have you updated your
beneficiary designations for your
insurance?Yes, your mother was the best
person to designate as your
beneficiary when you were
single, but now that you’re
married and have children, make
sure you’ve provided for them. If
mama doesn’t like your spouse,
she may not hand over the
money.
Do you have flood insurance?
Ty pically, a basic homeowner’ssave their money for an
emergency.
The time in between storms
makes us complacent.
When Hurricane Maria hit in
2017, you promised to look over
your homeowner’s insurancepolicy. Did you? When was the
last time you double-checked
what’s covered and what isn’t?
Remember when your relative
died and people were scrambling
to find the money for the
funeral? You vowed you wouldn’t
leave such a financial mess for
your family to deal with. Ye t it’s
been a year or two, and you still
haven’t gotten around to gettingAfrican Americans don’t
sunburn.
I woke up the next day in so
much pain I cried. I peeled for
days as my skin began to heal.
Lesson learned: Prepare and
protect yourself.
Hurricane Dorian has become
an all-out disaster and one that
not even the most prepared
could weather without loss or
damage.
However, as I view the satellite
images of the storm, it reminds
me of how often people fail to
prepare for the financial
disasters that are just as
unpredictable — a recession, a
job loss or a monster storm.
I shake my head when folks —
who can afford to leave — ignore
the dire warnings from
authorities to evacuate believing
they can ride out the hurricane.
They’re overconfident of their
ability to manage in a crisis,
much like the people who keep
saying, “I’ve got a secure job, so
why do I need to save?” Or they
use the expression “you only live
once” t o justify taking that
vacation, when they needed toYou may not be in
the path of
Hurricane Dorian,
but it’s still a good
idea to be
financially
prepared for a
storm.
Think of your
financial life as
going to the
beach. One of the
things you need to have on hand
is sunscreen. You can’t see the
harmful UV rays, but if you stay
out too long without protection,
you can get burned — sometimes
badly.
I learned the hard way how
important it is to protect myself
from the sun. On my first trip to
the Caribbean — Jamaica — not
only did I neglect to put on
sunscreen, I applied baby oil,
because I wanted a very bronze
tan while keeping my skin
moisturized.
Stop laughing.
I was a young adult. And
growing up, we never went to the
beach, so I didn’t know. Plus, I
foolishly believed the myth that
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113 3..00%%BY JONATHAN O’CONNELLNewsroom staff members at
one of Gannett’s largest newspa-
pers, the Arizona Republic,
launched a unionization effort
Wednesday in advance of the
company’s planned acquisition
by GateHouse Media.
Other Gannett papers are
unionized, but the Republic
would be the first of Gannett’s
papers to organize while under
the company’s ownership, staff-
ers from the paper said, and the
effort may signal a broader effort
to unionize papers before the deal
to combine the two chains is
completed.
Gannett and GateHouse are
under intense pressure by inves-
tors to find an estimated
$300 million in annual cost sav-
ings as part of the $1.4 billion
deal. That h as prompted concerns
among staff at t he two companies’
more than 250 daily newspapers
and hundreds of weekly and com-
munity papers that already much-
reduced newsrooms will be cut
even further — and that addition-
al employee protections will be
critical.
If the battle at the Republic,
Arizona’s largest daily newspa-
per, is any indication, the effort to
unionize at Gannett may not be
easy.
Reporters, photographers, pro-
ducers, columnists and other em-
ployees from the newspaper an-
nounced Wednesday that they
had signed union authorization
cards. In p reparing the announce-
ment, they also shared an email to
staff from Greg Burton, the Re-
public’s e xecutive editor and West
Regional editor for Gannett, in
which Burton warns those back-
ing the union drive from “track-
ing the comings and goings of a
number of their co-workers” who
weren’t supportive of the effort.
“We have been told that one
union supporter threatened that
things will get ‘even messier’ in
the weeks to come,” Burton wrote
in the email. “If organized surveil-
lance and spying are already oc-
curring in the face of a divisive
unionization effort, I hope you
carefully consider the conse-
quences of bringing the Guild
into our workplace.”
Rebekah L. Sanders, a reporter
who has been on the Republic
staff for almost 12 years, charac-
terized Burton’s message as aunion-busting effort. She said
with the unionization push, she
and her colleagues were fighting
for “a voice in the decisions being
made about our future.”
“A rizona Republic editors have
the same goal as employees: to
produce strong local journalism,”
Sanders said. “But the pressures
from corporate executives and
Wall Street continue to lead to
cuts, cuts and more cuts.”
Burton declined to comment.
However, tensions appeared to
escalate Tuesday evening when,
after word of the organizing plans
spread in the newspaper’s offices,
Sanders said she was called in by a
Gannett human resources repre-
sentative and “interrogated”
about her unionizing activities
and took her work phone.
“A fterward, the rep demanded
I give her my work cell,” Sanders
said in a lengthy explanation of
the exchange she posted on Face-
book. “I asked how I would con-
duct interviews the rest of the day.
She said, ‘You won’t.’ I asked when
I could have it back. She said she
would let me know. My work cell
has all of my contacts and is an
integral part of my job.”
A spokesman for McLean,
Va.-based Gannett declined to
comment on how the unioniza-
tion effort at the Republic and
possibly other Gannett titlescould affect the GateHouse deal.
Arizona Republic staffers say
that Gannett h as already dramati-
cally cut newsroom staff, from
roughly 425 journalists in 2007 to
about 130 today. The newspaper’s
four community bureaus have
closed, and a single reporter cov-
ers both the city of Phoenix and
Maricopa County governments.
“We can’t b e sure that whatever
company owns us will care about
journalism,” s aid Richard Ruelas,
a features reporter and 25-yearveteran of the Republic, in a state-
ment issued by newsroom staff-
ers. “But we can work to make
sure they provide some basics for
journalists.”
For some Wall Street investors,
Gannett’s cuts have not come fast
enough or deep enough in the face
of a continuing slide in the finan-
cial viability of local news. In M ay,
Gannett shareholders rejected a
hostile bid by hedge fund Alden
Golden Capital. Had that deal
gone through, experts expectedthat it would have led to far more
dramatic cost-cutting.
Gannett has also added some
new positions at the paper aimed
at growing digital readership, in-
cluding a four-person audio sto-
rytelling team and a four-person
data and investigations unit. In
June, the investigative journalism
nonprofit organization ProPubli-
ca chose the Republic as one of six
newsrooms to collaborate with on
local stories.
Should Gannett n ot voluntarily
recognize the Republic’s u nion, as
expected, it will trigger an elec-
tion among Republic staffers. The
staff behind the union effort are
seeking to be represented by the
NewsGuild-CWA, which repre-
sents more than 20,000 journal-
ists. A key number in the $1.4 bil-
lion agreement, due to close by
the end of the year, is $115 million
in annual savings that is expected
to come from “Newspaper Opera-
tions.”
GateHouse and its parent com-
pany, New Media Investment
Group, have not detailed where
those cuts will occur. In announc-
ing the deal, New Media Chair-
man Michael Reed told share-
holders that, should the deal be
approved, it will “not only pre-
serve but actually enhance the
journalism in our local markets.”
[email protected]In y our financial life, protect yourself against the storms
Michelle
Singletary
THE COLOR
OF MONEY
As I view the satellite images of Hurricane Dorian,
it reminds me of how often people fail
to prepare for the financial disasters that
are just as unpredictable — a recession,
a job loss or a monster storm.
Sta≠ers at Arizona Gannett newspaper move to unionize before acquisition
Organizing effort comes
before GateHouse deal,
expected cost-cuttingBILL CLARK/CQ-ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES
A copy of the Arizona Republic is displayed outside the Newseum in
Washington after Sen. John McCain died in August 2018.