Two weeks ago, the Boston Globe's newsroom union rejected a $10 million package of (necessary) cutbacks. So management slapped them with a huge pay cut. Now they're ready to accept...what they turned down, basically! What a waste of time.

The most remarkable thing about yesterday's NYT story on the whole Globe mess was the permeating sense that if both sides had just talked to each other honestly—and if they union had told its members exactly what the situation was—this whole thing could have been avoided. Reporters are smart enough to understand that a lower-paying job is better than no job.

But no, the union wanted to "stall," and management wasn't particularly proactive, and so the union ended up rejecting a pay cut of less than 10% in favor of a pay cut of 23% Which made the union first say it would fight it out with the labor regulators; but now, it seems, everyone's coming to realize that this paper just doesn't have all that much (or any) money, and that rejecting the original deal was a mistake. So they're almost back where they started:

Like the original proposal, the new agreement would cut $10 million in wages and benefits and eliminate lifetime job guarantees for about 190 workers.

The main difference this time around is that the union wants to swap a smaller pay cut for steeper benefit cuts. The original proposal would have reduced wages by about 10 percent.

Surely they could have gotten this done two weeks ago and saved the old, homebound citizens of Boston some stress. Their lives are hard enough having to live with the Red Sox.
[NYP, BG]