Top Boston dailies cut costs again

Posted by Leah McBride Mensching on June 25, 2008 at 10:49 PM

The two major dailies in Boston are cutting costs once again, with management at the Boston Globe asking unions to take an across-the-board 10 percent pay decrease, and the Boston Herald announcing plans on Tuesday to outsource printing operations and lay off 130 to 160 production-related workers, the Boston Herald reported Wednesday.

The Globe recently completed a round of employee buyouts, while the Herald's production staff being cut will come from press operators, electricians and other production-related staff, and will take place later this year.

Dan Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's largest union, said he would fight the pay cut.

“The Boston Newspaper Guild has given enough in the name of company equity,” Totten told the Herald. “Globe and New York Times (which owns the Globe) management must now give back.”

Patrick J. Purcell, owner and publisher of the Herald, said there are no current plans to cut employees in the paper's newsroom. He said outsourcing printing and cutting jobs is due to the newspaper's unreliable print quality, due to presses that are 50 years old. The outsourcing move may happen in late September or early October, the Herald reported.

“My personal goal has been, always, to keep Boston a two-newspaper town and the Boston Herald alive,” Purcell told the Herald.