The New York Times Co. did not follow through with threats to notify federal authorities of plans to close the Boston Globe, as an agreement has been reached with six of the Globe's seven unions. The Times Co. and the Boston Newspaper Guild will begin negotiating once more, but no time has been set for an agreement, the Washington Post reported today. The Times Co. is asking for US$20 million in savings, half from the Newspaper Guild.

At just before midnight last night, the original deadline, the Times Co. announced it would file the 60-day shutdown plan, under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law. However, union negotiations went on until 8 a.m. today, when most of the unions reached deals.
The concessions would come primarily from the Newspaper Guild at $10 million, as it is the paper's largest union, representing 600 newsroom employees. Mailers are being asked to give up $5 million, drivers $2.5 million and the pressmen $2.2 million. The company has also sought to eliminate job security measures for staff, removing seniority based redundancy rules and lifetime job guarantees, according to the Washington Post.

Negotiation were recently strained when a Times Co. accounting error was uncovered, requiring an additional $4 million in concessions from the Newspaper Guild.

"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., told Bloomberg in an interview. "The entire newspaper is in a similar quandary."