INK-STAINED ARISTOCRACY? (via aww):

Boston Globe staffers lash out at union leaders (Jessica Heslam, April 7, 2009, http://www.bostonherald.com)

Rank-and-file Boston Globe staffers are rising up against their union leaders, accusing them of keeping members in the dark over last week’s stunning ultimatum from the New York Times [NYT] Co. and questioning whether they’re putting their own interests first [...]

Leaders of the Guild, the paper’s largest union, are among the more than 340 union members who were granted lifetime job guarantees, according to a list on the Guild’s Web site.

The lifetime deals - a list dubbed the “Book of Life” - were given to staffers when the Taylor family sold the Globe to the Times in 1993. According to the contract, those staffers would never be laid off without cause.

Guild president Totten, vice president Scott Steeves, treasurer Patrice Sneyd and at-large executive board member Carl Younger are among those with lifetime jobs.

Totten didn’t return a call or e-mail yesterday.

Six of the union’s 23 governing board delegates also have lifetime job guarantees. It could not be determined how many members of management and other Globe unions were given lifetime gigs. The list of lifers also includes scores of Globe reporters, including columnists Joan Vennochi, Adrian Walker and Kevin Cullen, sports writers Mark Blaudschun, Kevin Paul DuPont and Nick Cafardo, and State House reporter Frank Phillips.

Some union members are frustrated with Guild leaders’ hard-line stance against the Times. In an e-mail to union members Friday night - the day after the Times’ threat - Totten said he told Times and Globe management it was time for them “to step up and give concessions.”

Leader-for-life? What a banana republic...

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 7, 2009 8:26 AM