• by Erik Sass , April 5, 2009

After years of declining ad revenue and mounting losses, the New York Times Company is threatening to close The Boston Globe unless the newspaper's 13 unions agree to cutbacks worth $20 million, per an article published in the Boston Globe on Saturday.

The demands came shortly after the Globe cut 50 positions as part of companywide layoffs. It's not clear how long the unions have to consider the demands from management before they reply, but the Globe reported that concessions will be negotiated with each union individually.

In 2008, the Globe lost about $50 million, according to an anonymous newspaper employee; it is on course for a loss of at least $85 million in 2009. The $20 million of concessions will probably come in various areas, possibly including pay cuts, ending pension contributions and layoffs.

The Boston Globe is the latest major newspaper to be threatened with closure by executives seeking to wring concessions from recalcitrant unions.

The first high-profile struggle at the Star-Ledger of Newark, owned by Advance Publications, ended last year with unions agreeing to layoffs that cut about 15% of the paper's employees. In January, unions agreed to cuts at the Denver Post, owned by MediaNews. In February, Hearst demanded concessions from unions representing employees of the San Francisco Chronicle -- including job cuts, which the unions assented to in March. More recently, last week, Journal Communications -- the publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- said it would ask unions for $1.2 million in pay cuts.

Lending substance to the threats, several big regional dailies have closed in recent months, citing huge losses amid a virtually unprecedented economic downturn.

The New York Sun closed in September of last year, followed by E.W. Scripps' Rocky Mountain News in late February. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer folded its print edition in early March, but the Web site is continuing to publish with a much-reduced staff.