The New York Times is so desperate for cash, it’s selling its principles.
Last December, with momentum building in Washington to drastically increase Big Labor’s clout through the abolition of secret workplace balloting, the Gray Lady couldn’t sing louder in praise of unions.
“Even modest increases in the share of the unionized labor force push wages upward,” it editorialized. Their absence “has contributed to unjustifiable disparities between executive pay and rank-and-file pay.”
That was then.
The Times announced on Thursday that it intends to lay off at least 25 unionized employees from its Manhattan-based newswire and move their jobs to sunny Gainsville, Fla.
Union-busting, the paper appears to have discovered, is great for the bottom line.
The union members on the chopping block pull in an average of $90,000 a year. Their non-union replacements, who will be attached to the Times-owned Gainsville Sun, are reportedly slated to make half that sum.
Indeed, there’s a legitimate argument for the move: sheer economic necessity. The Times has been struggling with declining circulation and ad revenue for years — and it’s already made plans to ax another hundred newsroom jobs by the end of the year.
Near-six-figure newswire staffers might not fit the business model.
Just don’t tell that to the paper’s editors.
“The argument against unions — that they unduly burden employers with unreasonable demands,” they huffed last year, “is one that corporate America makes in good times and bad.”
Translation: Suck it up, Mr. Sulzberger.