Globe To Raise Home-Delivery Rates

The Boston Globe is announcing it will raise its home-delivery rates. Globe spokesman Bob Powers says the hike is a necessary response to the sinking revenues that led the paper's owner, The New York Times Co., to threaten to close the paper in early May.

"As advertising is slipping away and classifieds are going almost entirely to the Internet, we needed to shift our model to ask our readers to actually provide the financial support for us," Powers said. "Which would be a more stable base of revenue."

Starting June 1, a seven-day subscription in the Greater Boston area will cost $12.25 a week, an increase of 50 cents a day.

Meantime, more details are emerging of a proposed deal between the Globe and the union representing workers who assemble the paper.

The 245 members of the Boston Mailers Union Local 1 are expected to vote later in May on $5 million in concessions, which management says it needs to save jobs.

The deal calls for a 5-percent pay cut for full-timers and an even deeper cut for part-timers. The 145 mailers with lifetime job guarantees would lose that perk.