Thursday, May 07, 2009

In Life, There Are Few Guarantees

Once you get beyond death and taxes, there's nothing you can count on in this world.

For a time, employees of the Boston Globe had one extra guarantee. They were guaranteed a job for life.

When the newspaper owner and the union representatives cobbled together that deal, it may not have made sense, but it kept the workers at their desks and the newspaper was going to live forever so why not.

Newspapers are dying a slow death, undone by the Internet that has diverted the advertising revenue stream. Add to that the flurry of mergers and buy-outs and consolidations that was normal business practice for a few decades, and newspaper owners find themselves so deeply in debt that they can't hope to get out from under.

Costs have to be cut or the paper dies. It's life-saving surgery with no guarantee for the patient's outcome, but there's no other choice. The employees at the Boston Globe who were clinging to their lifetime employment guarantee have discovered that the guarantee has to be sliced away or their newspaper will die. It's a job guarantee for the Globe's life, not theirs.

Either the New York Times, owner of the Globe, gets to lay off workers or the Globe is declared dead. Either the guild members give up the guarantee, or they'll have no job at all.

Word is, the union members understand the sad state of their newspaper and they'll abandon the job guarantee in an effort to save the paper.

Greater love has no man than to lay down his lifetime job guarantee for another.

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