United States

Furloughs and Pay Cuts Hit The Los Angeles Times — yet the owner still profits

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Furloughs and Pay Cuts Hit The Los Angeles Times

“The furloughed employees do not work in the Times newsroom. They could be out as long as 16 weeks, according to the Monday memo, and it is possible that they will be laid off at the end of the furlough period.”

Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire doctor and entrepreneur, bought the Los Angeles Times, in 2018.

He recently purchased the St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA for $135 million. “The St. Vincent facility is now being utilized by the State of California to combat COVID-19 in Los Angeles, now operating as the Los Angeles Surge Hospital.”

“Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., is also the Chairman & CEO of NantKwest and ImmunityBio, which are developing potential coronavirus therapeutics and vaccines. ImmunityBio’s goal is to develop therapies, including vaccines, for the prevention and treatment of HIV, influenza, and the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. NantKwest’s goal is to transform medicine by delivering living drugs-in-a-bag and bringing novel NK cell-based therapies to routine clinical care. NantKwest is a member of the NantWorks ecosystem of companies.

“NantWorks is a convergence of next generation machine vision, object and voice recognition technologies, ultra-low power semiconductors, supercomputing, and advanced networks for the purpose of bringing the digital revolution to healthcare, commerce and digital entertainment to an entirely new level.”

“NantWorks’ ImmunityBio has begun a supercomputing collaboration with Microsoft to map out the spike protein of the novel coronavirus—the means it uses to pry its way into and infect human cells.

“Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., is also a member of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new, 80-member task force that was created to guide the state’s economic reopening and recovery. He joins other members such as Walt Disney Co. Executive Chairman Bob Iger, Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Patagonia CEO and President Rose Marcario, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Homeboy Industries founder Father Gregory Boyle, Gap, Inc. CEO Sonia Syngal, Los Angeles Clippers President Gillian Zucker and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.