Boston Globe Workers Appeal to Gloria Steinem in Labor Dispute
"It's an opportunity to highlight the importance of worker's rights as a feminist issue."
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Today a group of journalists working for the Boston Globe and its affiliates are protesting the appearance of Linda Pizzuti Henry, the paper’s CEO and the wife of publisher John Henry, on a local radio panel celebrating women in the news. In an open letter to Gloria Steinem, who will deliver the panel’s opening remarks, the Boston Newspaper Guild asked the feminist activist and labor organizer to “stand in solidarity” with the union in its nearly three-year dispute with their billionaire owner. “When we learned more about the event, we found it was called “Trailblazers: Women News Leaders From Katharine Graham to Today,” says Julia Taliesin, a staff writer for Boston.com. “And we felt like it was an opportunity to highlight the importance of worker’s rights as a feminist issue.”
The event comes towards the third year of difficult negotiations between the guild and its owners, and seven years after the investment manager John Henry purchased the paper. Henry, an investment manager with an estimated $3.6 billion net worth who also owns the Boston Red Sox, purchased the Globe in 2013 and shortly pushed out a number of high-profile executives, citing the paper’s “waste and exorbitant costs.” Last year, his wife Linda was promoted to head Boston Globe Media Partners, which also includes the healthcare publication STAT News and Boston.com. As the local outlet GBH News noted at the time, “it has become increasingly clear over the past few years that [Henry] and her husband … were determined to impose their will on the media properties they own.”