Man, I knew America was behind the rest of the world in math, but who knew it was this bad?

Faced with an 8.3% wage cut as a result of enormous losses at parent company New York Times Co., Boston Globe Guild members rejected the plan their union negotiators presented them and decided they’d rather have a 23% pay cut.

Let this be a lesson to all you kids out there, there are two parts to the SAT test: verbal and math. They’re both important in the real world.

Haven’t Guild members been reading the papers? Newspapers are folding (zing!) faster than contestants at an origami convention.

If you’re in Boston, do you really want to dare your New York-based ownership to close you down?

If the Yankees can’t take a game from the Red Sox this week, The Times Co. may shut down the Boston Globe just to cover their gambling losses.

To be fair, one of the concessions in the new contract presented by the Times Co. was the elimination of lifetime guaranteed employment contracts for 190 Guild members that the Times Co. had signed off on in 1994 when they took over the Boston Globe.

If management is stupid enough to give 190 workers a lifetime contract, I think its only fair that the executives that signed off on such a deal get fired to cover the cost. Or get their McMansions pledged as collateral to cover the deal.

No doubt, there’s some lawyer who could argue the case, but I’m pretty sure “guaranteed lifetime employment” means management can’t later decide you can be fired unless Webster comes out with a new dictionary.

It’s either that or you have to start shooting journalists. After all, a deal’s a deal.

These days, we know there’s a third option. The government can step in and decide the Boston Globe is too big too important too Democratic too iconic to fail and can appoint Caroline Kennedy to run the paper. Just until things turn around … or until the sun goes dark, whichever comes first.

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“The good news, America? The Globe will now be 30% thicker because of all the ‘you knows’ on the Op-Ed page…”

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Image: Zuma Press

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Post from: EveryJoe

Boston Globe SAT Scores:750 Verbal, 90 Math