So, the Boston Newspaper Guild voted to reject the New York Times Company's proposed contract that would cut wages and benefits by $10 million. And, in response, the New York Times Co. instituted a unilateral 23% pay cut effective Sunday for all Globe employees covered under the Boston Newspaper Guild's contract. What next?
Lawsuits. The Guild has already filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleging that the unilateral pay cut challenging the Times's claim that the two parties are at an "impasse," the legal requirement for a company to act unilaterally in defiance of a collective bargaining contract. The Guild seeks an injunction on the pay cuts pending NLRB review of the situation, which would be a temporary reprieve.
Here's where it gets good. Many labor lawyers do not believe that the Guild will be able to force a injunction against the pay cuts. It's easier, after all, to collect millions of dollars in back pay from an employer if an NLRB decision goes against it than vice versa. But the Times may have made a crucial mistake. Adam Reilly has the goods:
Maybe not. Earlier today, Angela Cornell, director of the labor law clinic at Cornell University (I know--what are the odds?), told me that the Times Co.'s legal reasoning seemed shaky. As Cornell explained it, the Times Co. can only credibly claim that an impasse was reached on the contract offer voted down yesterday--and that, consequently, that's the only contract whose terms they can now unilaterally impose.
If the 23% pay cuts are illegitimate, it might turn out that the Times has not secured the $20 million savings it claimed that it needed in order to keep the Globe afloat. And that might have terrible consequences on its reported efforts to sell the paper. (The continued existence of lifetime job guarantees for 170 employees, as piddling an issue as that might seem, may have a similar chilling effect on would-be suitors.)
The bottom line? Murky. The Boston Globe isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The New York Times has backed off its threats to sink the paper, and some analysts, like Boston University's Tom Fiedler think that new ownership might be the thing to clear the waters at the paper.
Small recompense for employees at the Globe who will be seeing their paycheck arrive nearly a quarter light in a couple of weeks. Aside from its physical holdings, the Globe's main asset is its strong journalistic reputation, and one has to wonder how long that will hold up if starving reporters and staff members start to jump ship.
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