Boston Globe rejects cuts

still hard to stomach that this is happening to the boston globe, once the gold standard of sports journalism.

 

I'd have voted against it. At some point, this shit goes from economic necessity to gouging. St. Louis is in the same boat right now.

It makes the Guild proposals my oft-maligned company has made look very rosy in comparison.

 

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.

 

Given a choice between getting 77 percent of your paycheck or none, the option seems to be clear, but I'm glad I've never been faced with such a choice.

 

I was wondering if someone would suggest shutting it down. Over on the St. Louis thread, I believe it was suggested that the union tell corporate to shut down the paper and pay the severance agreed to by the Guild, and make a go of their own rag. Good on the Globe folks, and God's speed.

 

Really? It does? What if the option was, say, getting 30 percent of your pay vs. none? Would that choice still be clear?

By the way, the proposal they voted on wasn't for a 23 percent pay cut. That's what management will now seek to institute, as I understand it. The proposed cut was much smaller. I guess management did a poor job of justifying it to the Guild.

 

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

Herald says proposed cuts were 8.4 percent via furloughs and big losses in benefits and loss of lifetime gaurantee. Doesn't sound all that different from what the rest of us are working with, so without more details seems like a better option than 23% off.

 

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.

 

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?

 

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 shit 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.

 

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.