Boston Herald to retrench production workers, outsource presses

Another round of painful cost-cutting is around at Boston's two major daily newspapers, the Boston Globe, and the Boston Herald, with the management asking the Boston Globe unions to allow an across-the-board 10-per cent pay cut, while the newspaper tries to consolidate its printing plants.

The Boston Herald website quoted Dan Totten, president of the Guild, which is the Boston Globe's largest union as saying, ''The Boston Newspaper Guild has given enough in the name of company equity. Globe and New York Times [NYT] management must now give back.''

The Boston Herald has officially announced plans to outsource its printing operations, and lay-off between 130 to 160 press operators, electricians and other production-related workers. Herald owner and publisher Patrick J Purcell has no plans to retrench newsroom staff, and said that he told union leaders that the job cuts and outsourcing were necessary on account of unreliable print quality at the newspaper's 50-year-old presses, ''that dates back to when Eisenhower was president''.

The actions are tentatively scheduled to start around end September or early October, preceded by three months of negotiations that Purcell said he wants to devote negotiating severance settlements.

Talks are on with News Corp., which owns a plant in Chicopee, where editions of The Wall Street Journal are printed. If all goes well, the plant would manage the printing of the Herald, six days a week. The Herald is also in talks to print the Herald on Fridays at Boston Offset, which owns a plant in Norwood where USA Today is printed, since the Chicopee plant prints the Barron's business publication on Friday night.

The Boston Herals website also quoted Boston Globe executive vice president Al Larkin Jr. as saying that the company has asked for the wage cuts because of declines in advertising revenues.