Negotiating Boston Globe Workers Threatened With Closure
BOSTON, MA (May 4, 2009) – Boston Globe workers who belong to four unions that are negotiating with the paper's owner, The New York Times Co., were told late Sunday night that failure to reach financial concessions could force the owners to shut down the newspaper.
If filed in one week as threatened, a shut-down notice would let the Times Co. close the 137-yearl-old Globe within 60 days.
During negotiations late on Sunday night, around 10 p.m., the Times Co. issued their shut-down ultimatum, the Globe reports.
The newspaper is forecast to lose $85 million in 2009 unless it makes major cuts, the Times Co. says.
Unions representing Globe workers have been asked to make $19.7 million in concessions ($10 million from Boston Newspaper Guild workers, $5 million from the mailers' union, $2.5 million from the delivery truck drivers, and $2.2 million from press operators).
Early Monday morning the Teamsters Local 259, which represents about 210 Boston Globe drivers, said they have reached an agreement with Globe management. The union would not disclose the details but said their concessions, which were agreed upon sometime after midnight, are worth about $2.5 million.
Later on Monday morning the pressmans' union said they've also reached a tentative agreement with the Times Co., but the Guild has "taken a break" after the marathon bargaining session saying that the Globe management had rejected their officer of a proposal that included a 3.5 percent pay cut for most employees and unpaid furloughs.
Today's lead story in the Globe tells readers of the possible shut-down under the headline, "Agree Or Else, Globe Tells Unions."
On Sunday a newspaper spokesman told the Globe that managers have provided the unions with a copy of the closure notice that they are "prepared to file by midnight next Sunday" if their concessions aren't met, a closure notice that's required by the WARN Act giving employees of large companies 60 days notice if owners intend to shut down a business.
The Guild says it represents more than 600 editorial, advertising, and business workers at the Boston daily.
In a statement the Guild said, "Despite the company's hostile tactics, we continue to negotiate in good faith and work diligently toward an acceptable outcome." The Guild says the closure threat came after the Guild had presented a proposal that exceeded the $10 million in cuts being asked of them.
Readership habits and print advertising sales have impacted publishing in Boston the same as it has in almost every other American city with daily newspapers in recent years. Another old, famous Boston newspaper – The Christian Science Monitor – earlier this year stopped being a daily print product and became a 24/7 online operation with a weekly printed magazine-format magazine.
Other American newspapers making headlines for being in dire straights at the beginning of this week include The Columbian in Vancouver, WA, where the newspaper's parent company filed for bankruptcy protection late Friday in Tacoma; the Morning Call in Allentown, where 70 jobs have been cut in Pennsylvania; and also in Pennsylvania the Reading Eagle, where 52 workers have been laid off.
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