Yesterday I relayed some comments from Maria Cramer, the Globe reporter who chaired the trial board that recently expelled Dan Totten as head of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the paper's largest union. Cramer took vigorous issue with the notion that Totten's expulsion was payback for the way he handled negotiations with the New York Times Co.

Like my former colleague Dan Kennedy, I've wondered whether Dan Totten's ouster as head of the Boston Newspaper Guild might be connected to Totten's hardline stance during acrimonious contract negotiations with the New York Times Co. earlier this year.

But according to Globe reporter Maria Cramer--who chaired the trial board that found Totten guilty of assorted charges yesterday, and subsequently expelled him from the union--that's absolutely, positively not the case.

Some things to ponder in the wake of today's news that the New York Times Co. won't be selling the Boston Globe after all (Herald story here, Globe story here, entire memo to follow):

1. Given the speed with which the Times Co. decided to reject the bids assembled by Steve Taylor and Platinum, it seems--at least from the outside--like not a lot of deliberation was required.

The Globe story of the moment is the (possibly) impending sale of the paper--but mounting resistance to a new, high-cost health plan among the members of the paper's biggest union is a noteworthy subplot.

Earlier this afternoon, a letter went out from more than 100 employees to publisher Steve Ainsley. They're asking management to restore a "significant portion" of $1.

Just received an email sent from several Globe staffers to the leadership of the Boston Newspaper Guild (with the exception of the embattled Dan Totten), in which they ask the union to find some way to avoid implementation of what sounds like a very bare-bones healthcare plan.

In terms of management-union and intra-union dynamics at the Globe, what's really striking is the paragaph in which the signers claim they received misleading information from the NYT Co.

Fascinating twist in the battle for control of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's biggest union: the Guild's executive board has taken action against Guild head Dan Totten for (if I'm reading the legalese correctly) allegedly inappropriate handling of union finances. The email sent to Guild members this afternoon follows; I'll post more as the situation develops.

Maybe not--in a recent column, Poynter analyst Rick Edmonds notes that claiming a loss on the Globe could help the Times Co. defray some recent capital gains:

Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson is on the record saying the company expects to close by the end of the year on the sale of its 17.75 percent share of the Boston Red Sox and the associated New England Sports Network.

 

 

As you may know, there's a movement afoot inside the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's largest union, to hold a recall election. The impetus? Dissatisfaction with the way the Guild's leaders--including Guild head Dan Totten--handled the recent concede-or-close threat from the New York Times Company.

According to the Guild's bylaws, the recall-election process is actually pretty straightforward:

A recall election may be initiated in two ways: (a) The Governing Board, by a two-thirds vote of its entire membership, may initiate a recall election process in the case of some or all union officers or delegates; or (b) the membership may initiate a recall election process with 20 percent of the membership signing a petition to the Governing Board for that purpose.

1. The Governing Board must so inform the membership of this decision and reasons for this decision within 10 days.

2. The Governing Board must call a general membership meeting for the purpose of discussing this decision.

3. The general membership will then have the power to call a special election under the election procedures in Article III. 

Earlier today, though, I was forwarded an email--originally sent by Totten--which argues, basically, that it's not that simple....

Big Boston-media development: in today's Globe, Beth Healy reports that former Globe publisher Ben Taylor has backed his cousin Steve's bid to purchase the paper their family owned for more than a century.

As I noted in this week's Phoenix, employees of the Boston Globe's newsroom are surprisingly willing to forgive and forget the acrimony that followed the New York Times Co.

If you read today's Globe write-up of Steve Pagliuca's US Senate campaign kickoff, you know that the former would-be Globe owner's past donations to Republicans--including Mitt Romney--are going to be a campaign issue:

Pagliuca said he had donated to and backed Romney’s candidacy out of personal loyalty, because Romney had hired him at Bain Capital in 1989 and was a personal friend.

My first thought, when I heard about the tentative agreement struck by management and the Boston Newspaper Guild last night, was that Guild head Dan Totten must be patting himself on the back right now. After all, Totten's non-endorsement of the contract proposal rejected by the Guild last month was predicated on the assumption that he could get a better offer from the Times Co

Beat the Press blogger Ralph Ranalli notes an interesting contradiction regarding the ongoing Times Co.-Boston Newspaper Guild negotiations:

My question is this: Since the imposition of the 23 percent wage cut was based on the Times claim of a bargaining "impasse," how Times officials be participating in marathon bargaining sessions yet asserting an impasse at the same time? Someone help me with this.