GBH employees say they were left in the dark ahead of layoffs

GBH laid off 31 employees on Wednesday and said it would stop production on three television programs immediately, a move that staffers say caught them by surprise.

The cuts across 13 departments represent 4 percent of GBH’s overall workforce, with GBH News seeing about 10 percent of its staff laid off, the station reports.

The development comes a day after Pam Johnston, the general manager of GBH News, announced she is stepping down from her position at the end of the month.

​​“We made these hard choices only after implementing a range of other cost-saving measures and operating efficiencies,” Susan Goldberg, GBH chief executive, wrote in an email to staff Wednesday, according to GBH. “The basic reason for these reductions is simple: revenues are flat and the cost of doing business has gone up. A lot.”

Goldberg also said that the television programs Greater Boston, Talking Politics, and Basic Black will cease production immediately.

“We will re-invent them as digital-first programming,” Goldberg wrote. “But for now we are stopping production because, as audience behaviors have changed, these shows no longer draw enough viewers to justify the cost of making them for television.”

According to the station, GBH is facing a 7 million budget gap.

Station leaders had previously warned of potential layoffs in the face of the difficult financial headwinds, but GBH employees on Wednesday voiced shock over the cuts.

Newsroom union steward Zoe Mathews told GBH News the cuts were made without talks with the union and that she and other newsroom staff felt “blindsided.” 

“Over the course of the past few months, when we have had all-staff meetings with organization leadership, we in the newsroom were not unaware of the financial situation at GBH, but I’m shocked that management has decided to make cuts from the newsroom and not explore other options,” Matthews said.

Jim Braude, co-host of GBH’s Boston Public Radio, told listeners during Wednesday’s show that colleagues were being laid off, saying that he learned of the cuts from staff who lost their jobs but that managers had not issued any communication on the development.

“It’s really disturbing… We know almost nothing,” Braude said, according to the Boston Herald.

“We just want our coworkers to know we care about them, and we will do whatever we can to help them in any way that we can,” he later added.

Co-host Margery Eagen also weighed-in, according to the Herald.

“Ditto to everything you just said, Jim,” she said. “I feel horrible, and my heart goes out to people who have lost their jobs.”

The cuts at GBH are occurring a month after Boston’s other public radio station, WBUR, saw two dozen employees opt for buyouts and two staffers get laid off as the public media organization also works to mitigate revenue declines.