Boston Globe rejects cuts

[WriteThinking]

140 didn't even vote.....to me that's just egregious.

WFW.

People think their votes don't matter? Or, they don't vote at all because of that belief? This is Exhibit A to the contrary.

If I'd been part of this, I'd have voted yes, particularly if the guild could have, perhaps, countered with some kind of a time limit/time frame on the cuts.

Does anybody know if this proposal was to be for, say, a year, or two years, and with a stipulation to look at the state of the company/the economy/the industry again at that point?

 

[Michael_ Gee]

I think some posters are overlooking the point of the Times' demands, which is stripping the seniority language from any contract so that they can make mass layoffs without regard to it. They are looking to dump every employee over 50, or, more accurately, every employee who's been there long enough to accrue a salary above a certain figure. You can't blame those folks for not signing their own pink slips.
The Times Co., like all newspaper publishers, is an amoral institution with no commitment to any social goal except its profit. Worse, its commitment is to the Sulzberger family's profit, since it has screwed its own stockholders as regularly as the employees of its satellite papers.
Its pompous self-righteousness is the cherry on top of the **** sundae.
As noted before, a hard choice, a lousy choice. A narrow majority of the Globe Guild chose to fight. I respect that very much.

 

[SF_Express]

Few will agree with me, but I could understand not voting if I was pretty much 50-50 and figured I'd let my colleagues have it their way.

But, as I said: Few will agree.

 

[playthrough]

I can see that, SF. Maybe if by some great fortune I was a staffer who had tons of money socked away or a spouse with a high-paying job, meaning I'd be OK when my pink slip came, I'd abstain.

It's just a **** salad either way.

 

[Joe Williams]

My experience with Guild votes is that the worst result is to wind up with a close vote. As in, a narrow margin.

Managements take that as a sign of a split within the ranks and will try to exploit one side or the other. In this case, for example, I could see the Times telling all those under 50 and under whatever salary threshold might be targeted that "the old creeps sucking up the bigger paychecks are to blame for this 23 percent pay cut." And even though the grunts would know that, no, Times management is to blame for the pay cut, it might get some traction with that claim.

That said, if a company bargains itself into giving "lifetime job guarantees," then it has to live with that. For those union members' professional lifetimes. Either that or go out of business completely. Because anything short of that will be viewed with great cynicism, that shedding the "guarantees" was the difference between survival and boarding up the joint. Assuming the Globe stays in business, and has 190 employees or more going forward, those 190 need to be the ones with the "lifetime" jobs. Retrain 'em, redeploy 'em, whatever it takes.

What is it about "lifetime" that the Times doesn't understand?

 

[Riddick]

140 didn't even vote.....to me that's just eggregious.

To me, that means there are 140 people who can't ***** about the outcome.

 

[Bob Slydell]

This is headed straight for litigation. First to the NLRB. It is not beyond the realm of possibility the union could find a friendly judge to issue an injunction against those furriners from New York.
I think the voters made the best of two sucky choices. Approximately 50 percent of them would have been voting for their own unemployment with a yes vote anyhow.
If the Times wants to shut it down, let 'em. Then let 'em try selling their own paper here. I'll cancel, and I'll bet a lot of other Bostonians would too.

It went to the NLRB today.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

This will not end well...

It wasn't going to end well regardless.

Hell, it didn't even start well.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

23 percent paycut? Sheesh. Why stop there? If you can get away with that, you can get away with anything.

And I never thought she was hot.

CHNI, that popular dirtbag of journalism companies, and Gannett, the self-proclaimed industry innovator, are taking hard notes on this 23 percent thingy....I just wonder how Gannett is dealing with its jealousy concerning their failure to come up with this idea first.

Regarding CNHI: What does 23 percent of jack**** equate? Can't be much.

 

[TheMethod]

I would have voted no, because I have a hard time believing that crushing the pay of its already-low-paid employees is the "only financially viable option" for a multimillion-dollar corporation that I'm assuming is still profitable. Maybe I'm a moron, but I'm just not buying that. I want to see the cards on the table.

 

[Armchair_QB]

23 percent paycut? Sheesh. Why stop there? If you can get away with that, you can get away with anything.

And I never thought she was hot.

CHNI, that popular dirtbag of journalism companies, and Gannett, the self-proclaimed industry innovator, are taking hard notes on this 23 percent thingy....I just wonder how Gannett is dealing with its jealousy concerning their failure to come up with this idea first.

Regarding CNHI: What does 23 percent of jack**** equate? Can't be much.

Crap-and-a-half

 

[LongTimeListener]

I would have voted no, because I have a hard time believing that crushing the pay of its already-low-paid employees is the "only financially viable option" for a multimillion-dollar corporation that I'm assuming is still profitable. Maybe I'm a moron, but I'm just not buying that. I want to see the cards on the table.

I do not believe anyone at the Globe could have been considered "already-low-paid" before these cuts went in. The end of the lifetime guarantees are an enormous issue that might have been the true reason for the outcome of the vote. But as to the pay cut, 8.4 percent would have left all of those employees with very good incomes relative to both the journalism world and the rest of the nation's workforce.

 

[TheMethod]

How much does the average Globe employee make?

 

[ScribePharisee]

23 percent paycut? Sheesh. Why stop there? If you can get away with that, you can get away with anything.

And I never thought she was hot.

CHNI, that popular dirtbag of journalism companies, and Gannett, the self-proclaimed industry innovator, are taking hard notes on this 23 percent thingy....I just wonder how Gannett is dealing with its jealousy concerning their failure to come up with this idea first.

Regarding CNHI: What does 23 percent of jack**** equate? Can't be much.

23 percent of Jack**** is ck****. Maybe ck is short for chicken.

 

[buckweaver]

I do not believe anyone at the Globe could have been considered "already-low-paid" before these cuts went in. The end of the lifetime guarantees are an enormous issue that might have been the true reason for the outcome of the vote. But as to the pay cut, 8.4 percent would have left all of those employees with very good incomes relative to both the journalism world and the rest of the nation's workforce.

Most of the nation, except parts of the coasts and Chicago, doesn't have Boston's cost of living.

Just because the numbers are bigger doesn't necessarily mean they're getting paid well, relative to where they are.

I'm getting paid almost twice as much as I did at my hometown paper, four years ago. Doesn't mean I can afford a much better standard of living, where I'm at now. It just costs a lot more to live here, thus the number is a lot higher.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Cost-of-living issues: Well, duh. I live in California. I'm kind of familiar with that.

Anyone with knowledge to the contrary, please steer me right, because I'm just taking my best guess based on what I know of pay scales around the country. With the Globe's status as a destination paper and the way longtime employees have been treated and compensated up until the last 2-3 years, I would wager that many are making six figures (some clearing that number by tens of thousands of dollars) and almost all are making at least $80,000. Again, just a guess on my part, but I would imagine that's what it took to lure someone from a mid-major a decade ago. So 8.4 percent less would have represented a still meaningful income.

 

[mustangj17]

A 23 percent pay cut would do me in. I would probably lose it and quit on the spot.

 

[buckweaver]

I would wager that many are making six figures (some clearing that number by tens of thousands of dollars) and almost all are making at least $80,000.

I find that very, very hard to believe.

And yeah, I live in Cali, too. Not everybody, even at major papers out here, is making $80,000, and it's just as expensive. Certainly some managers are. Some columnists and high-profile writers, too (the ones who haven't been laid off, anyway.) Not most production folk, not most reporters.

 

[FileNotFound]

I would wager that many are making six figures (some clearing that number by tens of thousands of dollars) and almost all are making at least $80,000.

I find that very, very hard to believe.

And yeah, I live in Cali, too. Not everybody, even at major papers out here, is making $80,000, and it's just as expensive. Certainly some managers are. Some columnists and high-profile writers, too (the ones who haven't been laid off, anyway.) Not most production folk, not most reporters.

Agree with Buck here. I'm fairly familiar with the pay scales at large newspapers. Your average reporter/desk person is probably still shy of $60K; only upper management and elite writers/columnists are clearing six figures (and even at that, probably not by much).

 

[Armchair_QB]

I would wager that many are making six figures (some clearing that number by tens of thousands of dollars) and almost all are making at least $80,000.

I find that very, very hard to believe.

And yeah, I live in Cali, too. Not everybody, even at major papers out here, is making $80,000, and it's just as expensive. Certainly some managers are. Some columnists and high-profile writers, too (the ones who haven't been laid off, anyway.) Not most production folk, not most reporters.

Me too.

Maybe if you took the combined salaries of two or three employees you might get into six figures.