Outsourcing Protested By Globe Union

Globe Union Rallies Against Outsourcing

 

Boston Newspaper Guild is joined by local unions and political leaders to protest the New York Times Company's outsourcing of jobs at the Boston Globe

 

BOSTON, Feb. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- The Boston Newspaper Guild, which represents nearly 1,000 Boston Globe employees, was joined by local unions, Massachusetts labor leaders and elected officials today to protest the outsourcing of Boston Globe jobs to India by the New York Times Company, which owns the Boston Globe.

 

The protest came on a day when the Boston Globe had previously scheduled a business symposium entitled, "How to Attract and Keep Good Workers."

 

"The hypocrisy of the New York Times Company is staggering," said Dan Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild. "We are here today to call for a stop to the slash and burn policies of this absentee landlord."

 

The New York Times Company recently announced the elimination of more than 120 jobs at the Boston Globe. Of these, 55 jobs in advertising finance will be outsourced to India. The job cuts came less than one month after Boston Newspaper Guild members ratified a four-year contract containing no guaranteed wage increases and significantly higher employee health care costs.

 

"Despite employees' good-faith approval less than two months ago of a four-year contract containing difficult wage freezes and increases in health care costs, Boston Globe employees are now faced with the indignity and outrage of seeing their jobs shipped overseas," said Totten.     "The outsourcing of Boston Globe jobs to India fits a systematic pattern of disinvestment in the Globe by the New York Times Company. The Boston Globe has eliminated more than 200 jobs since 2005,'' Totten said. "Our members recognize the challenges facing our industry, but we believe that the way to succeed in a difficult marketplace is to invest in the human resources of the Globe, the very people who have built this great newspaper into the great institution that it is today. The way forward must not be paved with outsourced workers and disappearing jobs."

 

These measures come on top of other cost-cutting moves, such as shuttering all of the Boston Globe's foreign news bureaus - a troubling sign of the Times Company's disinterest in the Globe's journalistic ambitions and the newspaper's mission as a vital news source.

 

About the Boston Newspaper Guild
The Boston Newspaper Guild (BNG -TNG/CWA local 31245) is the employee union for the Boston Globe newspaper. We proudly represent more than 1,000 employees including reporters, editors, page designers, advertising salespeople and advertising sales support persons, ad-designers, circulation managers, accountants, marketers and information technology specialists, security guards, shippers/receivers, nurses, secretaries, and more. Our members produce Pulitzer Prize-winning, nationally-acclaimed work for the daily and Sunday Boston Globe Newspaper. We are affiliated nationally with The Newspaper Guild (TNG) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

 

SOURCE The Boston Newspaper Guild