BOSTON – The Boston Globe and its largest union, the Boston Newspaper Guild, reached a tentative agreement on wage and benefit cuts in the early hours of Wednesday morning, apparently eliminating for now the possibility that the largest newspaper in New England would stop printing.
Although full details have not been released yet, The Guild – which represents more than 600 of The Globe’s editorial, advertising and back-office workers – is reported to have agreed to a sizable pay cut, unpaid furloughs, and changes to the lifetime job guarantees held by about 190 employees, according to The Globe.
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The agreement ends a trying month for The Globe, which has become a symbol of the dire straits in which the U.S. newspaper industry now finds itself amid plummeting advertising sales and an audience that has migrated to free online content.
The Globe had been on track to lose $85 million this year, and its cash-strapped owner, The New York Times Co., last month threatened to close the newspaper if it did not get $20 million in savings as well as contract changes from the paper’s union work force. Executives at The Times Co. originally set a May 1 deadline for the negotiations, but that was later extended.
Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, said details on the agreement would not be released by either side until he briefs his members tomorrow, The Globe reported. The Guild was the only one of the paper’s seven unions that had not yet reached an agreement with Globe management.
Last night, Globe management reportedly told the union it was prepared to unilaterally slash wages by 23 percent and lay off a large number of workers, which likely would have set off a battle between the two sides in front of the National Labor Relations Board.
The deal reached this morning came after marathon negotiations at the offices of the Labor Guild of the Archdiocese of Boston.
Separately, The Times Co. announced this week that it will raise newsstand prices for The New York Times on June 1 for the second time in less than a year, The Associated Press reported.
The newsstand price for weekday and Saturday editions of The Times will rise from $1.50 to $2, while the price of a Sunday edition will increase from $5 to $6 except in New York, where the Sunday price will rise from $4 to $5.
