What goes around
By Kevin Cullen – Globe Columnist / February 9, 2010
Last year, when the staff at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center agreed to give up raises and benefits so the hospital would not have to lay off its lowest-paid workers, the story went viral.
In the face of unremitting bad economic news and rising unemployment, the idea that highly educated professionals at a big city hospital would take a hit for janitors and housekeepers and people who push patients around in wheelchairs was wildly counterintuitive. It was a refreshing tonic, a scene right out of a Frank Capra movie.
Turns out the selflessness and generosity of the people at BIDMC was more than life-affirming: It was successful.
Paul Levy, the medical center’s president and chief executive, was looking at the prospect of laying off 600 of the hospital’s 6,400 staff when he had the revolutionary idea of appealing to the best instincts of his employees. In the end, only about 70 people received pink slips, and most of them would have been let go any way, for various reasons, he said. None of those laid off were on the lowest salary rung.
And now this news: The foregone raises will be restored in April.
Playing the changes – How a boy with autism and a prodigious talent navigates Berklee College and a performing career
By Joseph P. Kahn
Globe Staff / February 9, 2010
The scrawny kid with the squeaky voice and Harry Potter glasses, the jazz prodigy from Sudbury whose feet didn’t reach the piano pedals when he began performing and recording, the autistic grade-schooler who dazzled everybody from Dave Brubeck to David Letterman with his keyboard wizardry, is growing up.
Last month, Matt Savage began his second semester at Berklee College of Music. Before setting foot on campus, Savage, who’ll turn 18 this spring, had already established himself as a rising star, having recorded eight CDs, the latest titled “Hot Ticket: Live in Boston,’’ and played the “Today’’ show, Birdland, Lincoln Center, and the New Orleans Jazz Festival.
Winner of multiple ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Awards, he’s jammed with a host of contemporary jazz legends such as Chaka Khan and McCoy Tyner, spent two summers at the prestigious Stanford Jazz Workshop, studied intensively with renowned pianist-composer Charlie Banacos, and been hailed by Jazziz magazine as “a wildly inventive composer.’’
Union unhappy with convention center food deal – Plan says new vendor will honor old pact
By Katie Johnston Chase – Globe Staff / February 9, 2010
The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority plans to bring in a new food and beverage provider to replace longtime vendor Aramark Corp., a move that is upsetting union officials who worry that the new company may not honor a hard-won labor agreement.
Levy Restaurants, based in Chicago, will retain the approximately 500 workers currently employed by Aramark under the same union contract, according to James Rooney, the authority’s executive director. But officials from Unite Here Local 26 said there is no agreement between Levy and the union to rehire the workers or uphold the terms of the contract.
The convention center authority board will hold an official vote Thursday, at which point there will be a signed agreement with Levy, the convention center authority, and Unite Here Local 26, Rooney said. The pact would take effect June 1 and last seven years. Levy would provide food and beverage service for both the Hynes and the Boston Convention & Exhibition centers.
“No one’s going to lose their job, and it’s the same contract that they just signed,’’ Rooney said, adding that Levy was demonstrating good faith by accepting an agreement that was reached with another company.
Paul Krugman talks money – Nobel Laureate warns of second slump
By Jessica J. Pourian/THE TECH STAFF REPORTER – February 9, 2010
On Friday, February 5th, Princeton professor Paul Krugman PhD ’77, 2008 Nobel Laureate in Economics, New York Times opinion columnist and former MIT professor spoke about the economic crisis, comparing it to the Great Depression.
His talk, planned by the Undergraduate Economics Association (UEA) and the Department of Economics, completely filled 32-123 and had several hundred people waiting outside.
The theme for the lecture was “What Have We Learned, If Anything?”, citing how America once again found itself in a situation similar to the Great Depression and referencing the mistakes the United States has made within the past few years.
The financial crisis of 2008, Krugman said, was strikingly similar in its progression to the events that led to the Great Depression 80 years ago. “We ended up having a teched-up, 21st century version of what happened in 1930,” he said.
