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Lee Newspaper Employees Demand Execs Give Back Bonuses

St. Louis Post-Dispatch employees are demanding corporate leaders at the paper's parent company, Lee Enterprises, give back their bonuses.

They say C-E-O Mary Junck  and C-F-O Carl Schmidt together collected $750,000 in bonuses at a time of layoffs at several Lee papers and cuts to retiree medical benefits.  Shannon Duffy, business representative for the United Media Guild - the Post's largest union - says the company's corporate leadership is out of touch with reality: "I cannot believe that the board of directors thinks that taking a company when it's at 40 dollars a share, borrowing almost a billion and a half dollars to buy Pulitzer and then tanking that company, deserves any kind of reward."
 
Lee emerged from bankruptcy early this year after buying the 134-year-old paper in 2005. Duffy says the United Media Guild is sending a petition to Lee's board of directors, calling for the bonuses to be invested in the company's employees. Lee operates several other papers in Illinois, including The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale.

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