Turnout is high in Globe union vote on cutbacks

About 80 percent of the members The Boston Globe’s largest union turned out to vote on whether to accept $10 million in wage and benefit cuts that the newspaper’s owner, The New York Times Co., says it needs to keep operating the money-losing paper.

Results of the voting won’t be known until later this evening.

Nearly 550 of 690 editorial, advertising, and business office workers represented by the Boston Newspaper Guild cast ballots on a contract proposal that would cut their pay by about 10 percent, slice health and retirement benefits, and eliminate lifetime job guarantees, union officials said.

The Times Co. has said it would impose a 23 percent pay cut on Guild employees should they fail to ratify the contract proposal.

The Globe, New England’s largest newspaper, is projected to lose $85 million without significant cost savings, according to the Times Co. Six other Globe unions have already ratified wage and benefit cuts that total more than $10 million.

In many ways, the day passed like any other day at the 137-year-old newspaper. Reporters made calls on stories, photographers ran out on assignments, and sales representatives sold ads. But with Guild members voting in a large conference room starting at 8 a.m., it was decidedly not a typical day.

Some paced the hallways, unsure about how to vote.

‘‘Either way, we’re going to lose,’’ said David Filipov, a reporter for 14 years at the Globe.

As Dina Rudick saw it, voting yes was the best of two terrible options.

‘‘The industry is in peril, and for us to expect things to remain the same is ludicrous,’’ said Rudick, a Globe photographer for the past seven years. ‘‘We may not like it, but we have got to evolve, and evolution may look like shrinking for now.’’

Musset Valentine, a circulation clerk, and father of four, said he voted no because he could not afford the cuts.

‘‘I don’t like the way the New York Times has treated us,’’ Valentine said. ‘‘We’ve had no raises in years, and I have a wife and kids in the house. I can’t vote yes.’’
(By Robert Gavin, Globe staff)