Vote Brings Boston Globe to Brink (Update)

Updated from 10:21 a.m. EDT

If the New York Times'(NYT Quote) threats were anything more than a scare tactic, the Boston Globe may have moved a step closer to the end of its 137-year life.

On Monday evening, the Globe's biggest labor union voted to call its parent company's bluff by rejecting pay cuts and other concessions that the paper's owner, the New York Times, had indicated were necessary for its survival. The margin for the naysayers was a slim 12, with 277 voting no to the proposed contract and 265 voting yes.

The union in question, the Boston Globe Newspaper Guild, represents mostly reporters, editors and business-side administrators and ad salespeople. The Globe's other six unions -- for pressmen, delivery truck drivers and mailers, among other groups -- had already agreed to concessions.

But these cuts were a bitter pill, and had come to epitomize the life-threatening problems -- and subsequent tough choices -- facing the newspaper business today.

The Times, which acquired the Globe 16 years ago for a then-whopping $1.1 billion, had said that it needed $20 million worth of savings to come out of the Globe's union contracts in order to keep the paper -- New England's largest daily -- in business, with half that amount coming from the Newspaper Guild.

The proposed contract would have cut employee pay by 8.4% a year, instituted a mandatory five-day unpaid furlough (which amounts to another 1.9% in salary reductions), and suspended contributions to retirement plans.

The Globe's bosses in New York have made a very public point recently of saying that closure of the Boston daily has always remained on the table. But the cost of shutting the paper down would be high, both financially and politically, and many have questioned the Times wherewithal to follow through on the threat.