Management threatens newspaper shutdown

? The management of The Boston Globe threatened late Sunday to begin the process of shutting down the newspaper in a dispute with its unions over $20 million in cuts.

The Globe’s owner, The New York Times Co., said it had given the Globe’s biggest union a copy of a notice it was prepared to file today if it was unable to agree on the concessions by midnight Sunday, a deadline that passed without word from the union or the Times Co. The 60-day shutdown notice is required under federal law.

The newspaper’s largest union, the Boston Newspaper Guild, called the move a “bullying” tactic by the Times Co., which last month threatened to close the Globe unless its unions agreed to $20 million in cuts, including half from the Newspaper Guild.

The Guild said late Sunday it had proposed more than the $10 million in cuts sought by the Times Co. to keep the newspaper running. In a statement released two hours before the midnight deadline Sunday, the Guild said its proposal called for “tremendous sacrifices, across virtually all categories of compensation and benefits.”