Patriot Ledger cuts 130 workers

The Patriot Ledger pared its staff by 130 employees last month, according to the state Department of Labor.

GateHouse Media Inc., which owns the Quincy newspaper, said in late July it had entered into a multiyear agreement with The Boston Globe to print the Ledger and its Brockton daily, The Enterprise.

Last month, as the printing arrangement launched, the Ledger laid off 21 full-time workers - nine pressmen and a dozen other production workers. The other 109 workers were part timers, most of whom worked as few as four hours per week, stuffing inserts into papers.

Nine of the laid-off full-time employees had 234 years of cumulative experience handling printing presses, said Martin Callaghan, president of the local Pressmen's Union. The union negotiated severance pay for the pressmen based on years of service, Callaghan said.

"It's been very difficult for us," Callaghan said of placing workers with such specialized skills. "We weren't able to find jobs for these nine guys."

Linnea Walsh, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, said state workers have connected with affected workers at both newspapers, offering assistance in finding replacement jobs.

Kirk A. Davis, chief executive of GateHouse Media New England and the Ledger's publisher, did not return calls seeking comment. Francie Nagy, a spokeswoman for New York-based GateHouse Media, declined to comment.

The layoffs come as the newspaper industry contends with revenue and circulation declines. GateHouse Media New England has funneled more resources toward its Web operations and, this week, said it was expanding its collection of community-centric websites to cover nearly 160 eastern Massachusetts cities.

Diedtra Henderson can be reached at dhenderson@globe.com.