Heartless Corporation Demands Workers Give Up Salary and Guarantees, Work Longer Hours, Just to Meet Its Almighty So-Called "Bottom Line"

The New York Times, which I'm certain stands against efforts by GM and Chrysler to force the UAW to make major labor concessions, plays hardball with the union representing the workers at its Boston Globe affiliate.

By the way -- the Globe will almost certainly be shuttered. Or will be merged with the NYT, with only a skeleton crew to handle local issues while the rest of the Globe publishes AP articles and stuff from the Times.

The New York Times [NYT] Co. wants Boston Globe unions to remove lifetime job guarantees and agree to sweeping layoffs with slashed severance - while increasing work hours for those who survive, workers were told last night.

But the president of the Boston Newspaper Guild insisted the union will hang tough and refuse to give in on the lifetime job perks.

“That’s a nonstarter. We will not give up seniority and the lifetime job guarantee,” said Dan Totten, addressing his membership at a Boston union hall.

He said union leadership would fight as “loud and long” as necessary against $10 million alone demanded from the Guild as part of $20 million in overall concessions by the Times.

For the first time, workers represented by the Newspaper Guild were given stark details of draconian cuts being demanded by the paper’s out-of-town owners under threat of shutting down the Globe.

The meeting in the Boston Teachers Union hall was marked by an angry confrontation between some union members who are willing to give up the job guarantees and the union’s top leaders, all of whom have the lifetime perk but have been resisting calls to make that concession, sources told the Herald.

...

Times executives last week threatened to shutter the Globe on May 1 unless all the newspapers’ unions cough up the $20 million in concessions.

...

Another reporter called the cutback plan “a union-busting tactic.”

Pat Daly, a retired advertising sales representative who worked at the Globe for 35 years, said the paper’s executives are asking Guild employees to cut too deep, without making sacrifices themselves.

“To see these people who got bonuses ask for concessions, it’s sickening,” he said.

But I'm sure the NYT will continue its pro-union jihad against Wal*Mart.

Thanks to JackStraw.

Problem, Meet Solution: What a great idea! Just have the government run the newspapers!

posted by Ace at 01:37 PM

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