Crush Liberalism

NYT cuts loose 550 union workers

Details:

The New York Times is shutting down City and Suburban Delivery Systems, a unit that distributed the Times and 200 other publications to newsstands in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area. With it, the NYT is shedding 550 full-time union jobs. Instead, company will increase its reliance on non-union contractors (read: cheaper) to distribute the Times to area retailers, much like the national edition of the Times, which is distributed by third-party companies.

The unit was formed in 1992 in a bid to diminish the clout of unions over the newspaper delivery business. The Times bought two newspaper wholesalers to form the unit and negotiated a long-term employment contract with drivers. A good idea at the time, but as NYT GM Scott Heekin-Canedy says now, “the business environment has changed dramatically since 1992 when City & Suburban was formed and wholesale distribution is no longer an economical business for the Times Company.”

I absolutely love the rich, chocolaty irony in this story!  The NYT has been a shill for unions since the beginning of time, and they never missed an opportunity to whack businesses and Republicans over the head for seeing the economic burden that unions produce.

Now, with the NYT hemorrhaging readers and advertisers, economic reality has hit the Old Gray Hag right in the mouth.  They are now forced to admit the obvious: unions are, by and large, about as useful as a football bat.

September 10, 2008 - Posted by crushliberalism | economic ignorance, hypocrisy, media bias, unions