BOSTON – Top executives at The Boston Globe have announced that they will not file a notice with the state today expressing their intention to shut down the newspaper.
The announcement followed news that Globe management has reached agreement on cost savings with six of the newspaper’s seven unions, the Boston Business Journal reported.
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The lone holdout is the Boston Newspaper Guild, which represents roughly 600 editorial, advertising and some operations employees at The Globe. Talks between the paper’s managers and the Guild are expected to resume later this week.
Globe management had threatened to file the shutdown notice last night as marathon negotiations with the paper’s unions continued, a tactic the Newspaper Guild described as “bullying.”
But this morning Globe spokesman Robert Powers told a Globe reporter: “We expect to achieve both the workplace flexibility, and the financial savings that we sought from these unions. We are not, therefore, making a filing today.”
Federal law requires companies to give 60 days notice before a mass layoff or a plant closing.
The Globe’s parent company, The New York Times Co., last month threatened to shut down the paper, which is said to be on track to lose $85 million this year.
Talks between Globe executives and Newspaper Guild representatives are reported to have stalled over management’s demand that the union give up lifetime job guarantees that nearly 200 Globe workers who are Guild members received in the 1990s.
The Guild says it has already offered the $10 million in savings that management has requested. But the union has balked at giving up the lifetime guarantees during the current negotiations, saying The Globe’s leaders must follow the arbitration terms laid out in the contract if it wants to revise the guarantees.
