Boston Globe Still Seeking Accord With Guild to Avoid Closure

The Boston Globe said it’s still trying to reach a cost-cutting agreement with its largest union after getting tentative accords with six other unions that brought it closer to avoiding a possible closure.

The Globe has agreements with unions representing mailers, drivers, pressmen and machinists, among others, Robert Powers, a spokesman for the newspaper, said in an e-mail, without providing further details. Members must vote on the proposals before they take effect.

New York Times Co., the Globe’s publisher, has asked unions to find $20 million in savings, half of it from the Boston Newspaper Guild, according to the union’s president, Dan Totten. The Guild submitted a new proposal with more than the $10 million in cuts, Totten said yesterday.

“It’s a game of chicken, not unlike what we just saw happen in the car industry,” Claire Gruppo, managing director of investment bank Gruppo, Levey & Co., said in an interview. “The entire newspaper is in a similar quandary.”

New York Times has been cutting jobs, reducing sections and seeking to sell its minority stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team as advertising revenue slumped. The Globe may lose $85 million this year, Times Co. has said.

The Guild said it is awaiting a new time and date for resuming talks. The newspaper’s management had extended a May 1 deadline by two days after drawing closer to an accord with its 10 unions.

The union’s proposal includes cuts “across virtually all categories of compensation and benefits,” Totten said yesterday. The Guild represents about 600 newsroom employees.

Guild Talks

The New York-based publisher added 19 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $5.59 at 12:49 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares had lost 26 percent this year before today.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for Times Co., said in an e- mail yesterday that talks were ongoing. She said the publisher doesn’t comment on the specifics of internal negotiations.

The Guild has said that Times Co. had threatened to close the Globe if no agreement was reached. Yesterday, the Globe said it had prepared paperwork required under the Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act for a possible closure of the Globe as soon as two months after the filing. Powers, the Globe spokesman, said the paperwork won’t be filed today.

Most U.S. newspapers, facing declining revenue amid the recession, hold little potential for a turnaround, Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is the largest shareholder of Washington Post Co., said on May 2.

Union newsroom workers at the New York Times newspaper reached a tentative agreement for a 5 percent pay cut last week that they said would help preserve as many as 80 jobs and save the publisher $4.5 million.

Times Co. imposed salary cuts of as much as 5 percent on almost all of its non-union staff through year end. link...