Global Realities

The Boston Newspaper Guild just narrowly voted to reject a contract that would have cut wages at the The Boston Globe by 8 percent, implemented furloughs and cut numerous other benefits. Now the the New York Times Company says it will go ahead with the alternative: a 23 percent wage cut... or closing the Globe entirely. What is the union going to do about it? Strike? Hurt themselves even more?

This is not some gun-to-the-head threat from an evil monolithic media giant. It's the reality of the newspaper business, but the union refuses to see the hard reality, as the L.A. Times reports:

It (the rejected contract) also would have eliminated lifetime job guarantees given to 190 Guild workers, mostly in exchange for concessions made in 1994, shortly after the publisher of the New York Times bought the Globe for $1.1 billion.

If you are asking, no, demanding lifetime job guarantees in the journalism business, I'd like to know what planet you're reporting on. I know a lot of people who would love to make that demand and hold an employer to it, namely a lot of veteran broadcast journalists who have been sacked in the rotten economy.

Concessions stink. But doing the math, I'd rather take that 8 percent wage cut and the other benefit cuts rather than that 23 percent hit and the possibility of unemployment. The unions with America's automakers are now learning all those demands for job security and pension benefits came back to bite them. True, both GM and the Globe have failed to adapt to changes in the business, but rather than be a part of the solution, the unions are adding to the problem by failing to accept all of the hard reality.