Boston Globe rejects cuts

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

 

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).

 

Me too.

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

 

This is a landmark case. If the NLRB rules against the Guild, or if they lose in court.. then every union paper in the country is free to void their contracts and arbitrarily reduce pay any amount they want.

 

Wouldn't that also be true for any union anywhere if the Guild loses? It wouldn't just impact newspaper unions.

 

I don't belong to a union, and never have, so I don't know how they do these votes.

But if it's a paper ballot, I hope someone also wrote "And tell 'em to go fuck themselves" below the checkmark.

 

This is a case for Michael Gee.

But my hunch is, the Globe folks are indeed at $80K and above, on average. The reporters and copy editors, anyway, don't know about the backroom folks.

 

80K ain't much in Boston if you're trying to feed a family.

 

Having worked at more than one major metro paper, I'd say your estimate is way high.

Don't know the Globe's pay scale specifically, but at the majors I've worked for, few were making $80,000. I'd be surprised if the Globe's average salary was even close to that. I guess the big numbers of the top columnists could pull the average up quite a bit, but I'd bet the vast majority is well under $80,000.

 

If someone has evidence to the contrary, I would love to hear it. But I would suggest you run your theory past copy editors at the Globe, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal and see what they think. Then I would suggest you ask people who five years ago were at Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami or Fort Lauderdale and get their opinions. You will find that you are laughably misinformed. (The reason I say five years ago is because by that point, after all, most of the Globe employees were in the door and on their wage scale. There have been no pay cuts since then.)

I link below to the contract for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which was agreed upon in August 2008 under great duress. Its minimum -- MIN-I-MUM -- salary for a six-year newsroom veteran is $69,888.

http://www.shoptalknet.org/contracts/ContractStarTribune.htm

And you are telling me that despite their relative places in the pecking order, Globe staffers are by and large making $10,000 less than that. Uh, OK.