Boston Globe at a crossroads

Paper Guy, I totally agree with you. It's understandable that the guild wants to keep the guarantee or get a lot out of it, but being a relatively young person it's seems out of whack that guarantees like that exist. It's poor business sense for the company and it's a crutch that I don't think employees should have. Not that the majority of people don't still work hard, but if you have a job guarantee doesn't that take a little incentive off busting your rear everyday to prove you deserve your spot? Definitely seems like an outdated perk.

 

Lifetime guarantees are nothing more than a severe form of seniority. Some of the craft unions have it to buy off their agreement to eventually disappearing due to technological obsolescence. For Guild members, it's language that insures the tenured ones are not laid off or get hefty incentives to leave.
The Times is going to cut the Globe in half the moment they get the chance. The job guarantees are the ONLY bargaining chip the Guild really has. They'd be nuts to let it go without extracting a good price for it.
When the Guild surrendered seniority at the Herald in '05, it managed to get a decent buyout/severance package in return. And when the cuts came, EVERY worker in sports over age 50 was gone, either voluntarily or otherwise.
Without that package, yours truly would have gone from several years of economic struggle to instant destitution. Those guarantees are held by the people the Times will ax. It is their only protection from immediate financial ruin. If it needs to be bargained away for the good of the other members, OK. But the guaranteed members need to be taken care of too.

 

Great perspective, Michael. Lifetime guarantees (gotta believe whoever agreed to those things no longer is part of management's negotiating squad) can be bought off but the union never should let them be smited.

 

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2009/05/globe_proposes.html

"Boston Globe management and the Boston Newspaper Guild resumed negotiations this evening so far apart that the company has proposed, with what it called its "last, best offer," to slash wages of Guild members by about 23 percent to gain the $10 million in concessions sought from the union, according to Guild and management representatives with knowledge of the negotiations."

 

That's the Globe management daring the union to strike. I wonder if they would.

 

lol. that's excellent, da man!!

 

If they strike, how does the paper get out? Do editors write, edit and paginate everything?

How does that work?

 

Could management and the higher-ups kill the paper out from under the Guild's members if they strike?

 

Depends.
When Youngstown struck a couple of years ago, the company brought in reporters from other Newhouse papers (paying them quite a bit) to work for a few weeks at a time. The NYT could do the same with (I'd assume) non-union reporters from its southern regional papers.
Or there are the legions of college/just-out-of-college kids in Boston, plus various stringers, freelancers, local weekly writers. Some of whom probably think they could do it better than the Guild vets and some of whom would give their left nut to get a foot in the door at the Globe (even a diminished, post-strike Globe). I'd imagine rounding up scabs wouldn't be all that hard. Would the quality suffer? Sure. Enough that readers would really care? Who knows.
It's the Achilles heel of any newsroom union. It's pretty tough to win in a strike.

 

There are quite a few people left in the Booth chain who could answer that personally from Youngstown...

 

It's time for math class. If a 23 percent cut saves $10 million, and the company is losing (it says) $80 million, how long before the Globe has half as many employees making half as much money? I'd say the right answer is nine months.

 

Yep. Even if the Guild caves now, it's just a matter of time until the hangman again ascends the scaffold. All the major metros are headed back to 1980, half the newsroom, management happy to make 8 percent profit. It's that, or fold.