Unions and the New York Times
Immediately below this paragraph is a selection of an editorial on the subject (the main point was support for Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor based on her pro-union views) from the New York Times dated Nov 29, 2008,
"....Even modest increases in the share of the unionized labor force push wages upward, because nonunion workplaces must keep up with unionized ones that collectively bargain for increases. By giving employees a bigger say in compensation issues, unions also help to establish corporate norms, the absence of which has contributed to unjustifiable disparities between executive pay and rank-and-file pay.
The argument against unions — that they unduly burden employers with unreasonable demands — is one that corporate America makes in good times and bad, so the recession by itself is not an excuse to avoid pushing the bill next year. The real issue is whether enhanced unionizing would worsen the recession, and there is no evidence that it would.
There is a strong argument that the slack labor market of a recession actually makes unions all the more important. Without a united front, workers will have even less bargaining power in the recession than they had during the growth years of this decade, when they largely failed to get raises even as productivity and profits soared. If pay continues to lag, it will only prolong the downturn by inhibiting spending...."
And immediately below this paragraph is a news story, from the NYTimes, reporting on Nov 13, 2009. The report is that the NYTimes is laying off employees and moving editorial jobs to Florida where they would not be unionized.
"The New York Times News Service will lay off at least 25 editorial employees next year and will move the editing of the service to a Florida newspaper owned by The New York Times Company, the newspaper and the Newspaper Guild said Thursday...The plan for the news service calls for The Gainesville Sun, whose newsroom is not unionized and has lower salaries, to take over editing and page design...."
So is this hypocrisy. Actually, in my opinion it is not. The 2008 editorial did not say, "companies should not fire union employees and hire non union ones". The editorial implied (it wasn't actually as clear as it could have been) that the law or the regulations of the Dept of Labor should make it harder to do this. This is similar in some ways to the Congressman who advocates more legislation to increase morality being caught in immoral action. Indeed, because the NYTimes, which isn't doing well financially (the market cap is down about 70% from 5 years ago) knows the forces that compel companies to favor non union workers and simply wants the law or regulations to balance the scales.
News report on NYTimes sending jobs to Florida is here.
