Pinch to put the pinch on Boston Globe hacks:
New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said the publisher’s unprofitable Boston Globe will probably need more cost reductions on top of the $10 million in wage and benefit cuts its largest union is already considering.
“There will be still more to come,” Sulzberger said today in a memo to employees co-written by Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson. “The Globe is on a path to a more secure financial future.”
The Boston Globe’s largest union is set to vote on a new contract next month that would cut wages by 5.9 percent, compared with an 8.4 percent decrease in a previous proposal the Boston Newspaper Guild rejected. Times Co. slashed Guild wages 23 percent on June 14.
Private-sector unions can be a pain — but for real angst and unreason, you need government unions. Those Globe jokers should ditch the Newspaper Guild and join the teachers’ mafia:
Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that’s what they want to do.
Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its “rubber rooms” — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.
… Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.
Public-sector unions: Just wait until these same great standards of public service are brought to government health care, which promises to be almost as great as government schools.