Globe cutting staff with buyouts

60 jobs targeted companywide

By Beth Healy, Globe Staff  |  February 29, 2008

The Boston Globe's publisher said yesterday the newspaper is looking to cut 60 positions through voluntary buyouts, as part of a broader cost-cutting effort at the company.

Buyout packages also will be offered at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, where 20 positions will be eliminated.

Both the Globe and the Telegram & Gazette are owned by The New York Times Co., which this month said it would trim 100 jobs from The New York Times newsroom.

Globe publisher Steve Ainsley said in a memo to employees, "This reduction in staff is a difficult but necessary step toward our ongoing goals of reducing costs and finding efficiencies that allow for the long-term health of our business."

This buyout will affect about 3 percent of the Globe's 2,200 employees. It is smaller in scale than the buyout completed last March, in which a total of 125 employees left the Globe and the Telegram & Gazette. This is the Globe's fourth buyout offer since 2001.

Twenty-four Globe newsroom employees took last year's buyout. This time, the company said it is not looking to reduce the newsroom staff by a specific number. There are several vacant jobs in the newsroom, which will count toward the 60 positions.

The buyout will be offered to employees with five or more years at the company. They will be given two weeks pay for every year of service, with a cap of one year's pay. Globe employees who received lifetime job guarantees in the early 1990s will be given three weeks pay for each year of service, capped at two years' pay.

Layoffs are possible, a Globe executive confirmed, if not enough people take the buyout.

Dan Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, which represents 900 Globe employees including newsroom staff, said the guild has lost about 300 members since 2000 as a result of buyouts and other job cuts. "We're concerned about staffing levels, which are already horrendously low." The job reductions have been particularly severe in the company's business operations, he said.

Employees of Boston.com, the website affiliated with the Globe, will be excluded from the buyout offer. Ainsley said the company would "continue to invest in this growing area of the business." Employees of GlobeDirect, a direct-mail unit, also will be excluded.

The latest round of Globe buyouts comes as the newspaper industry continues to struggle with shrinking revenues and pressure to make online news sites more profitable.

Tribune Co. of Chicago this month said it would cut as many as 500 positions companywide, or 2 percent of its staff, including 100 to 150 at the Los Angeles Times. Forty to 50 of those jobs will come from the Times newsroom.

Beth Healy can be reached at bhealy@globe.com.