According to a tipster, a meeting was called on Monday at the New York offices of William Morris Endeavor where Cara Stein, COO of WME-NY, informed agency assistants, most of whom came from William Morris in the merger with Endeavor, that their salaries are being slashed drastically, some down to $10 an hour. A rumor that such a thing might be happening was floated last month. Now it's been confirmed.

Calling the move a "cost-cutting measure to keep costs under control," Stein laid out the new pre-tax, seniority-based compensation rates for agent's assistants:

Employed at WME less than 1 year - $10/hr

Employed at WME 1-2 years - $11/hr

Employed at WME 2-3 years - $12/hr

Employed at WME 3 years or more - capped at $14 hour.

We're told that prior to the merger with Endeavor, newly hired assistants at William Morris were making $13 an hour and up. Additionally, Stein informed the assistants that they'll be forced to work a mandatory 50 hour work week from here on out. No word on whether or not the firm will set up a "good assistant" bonus prize ala Conde Nast.

Not receiving pay cuts: Assistants in the music and personal appearance departments. Our tipster speculates that Ari Emanuel doesn't want to do anything to ruffle the feathers of the heads of these departments as they're generating tremendous revenue for the company at this point.

Speaking of Ari, we wonder if he and his WME co-CEOs, Patrick Whitesell and Dave Wirtschafter, will be taking pay cuts like the little people to help the company's bottom line. If you've any insight into this, feel free to pass it along to us. Your confidentiality will be held sacred.

Nikki Finke was tipped that the William Morris kids, who were making around $13.50 an hour, are getting a pay cut to reflect the $9.50's worth of nickels thrown at the Endeavor slaves' feet every sixty minutes. Now the poor WMA staffers are getting their pay scaled back, what with the economy and all. WME bosses are calling it "recalculating." Brutal.

It's a potential pay decrease that "would honestly make the wages unliveable," according to one brave but anonymous, still employed soul who cried out from the fiery chasms of the still molten-hot headquarters.

All this is extra funny and sad when you consider just how insanely much those blustering, besuited Ari Gold-wannabe agents are making.

Though, once a few of these youngsters start moving up the ranks and start tasting the good life, you can bet they'll soon forget the plight of the gofer pool. It's just the way these things go.

The Guild representing Times employees met with management yesterday afternoon, and they've put out a typically cagey statement saying they'll consider it. Three notable points:

1. The paper says the ten vacation days that it's giving workers in exchange for the pay cuts will be paid vacation days, not unpaid furloughs. Same thing: ten unpaid days at your current salary, or ten paid days at a lower salary.

2. Even if all the union employees go along with these cuts, the NYT will only save a measly $4.5 million.

3. "The company would not guarantee that there will be no layoffs if the Guild were to agree to go along."

A sunny forecast! Unfortunately for gung-ho workers, the union is in an awfully weak position. Bill Keller says that if they don't go along with the pay cuts, it will mean another 60-80 newsroom layoffs this year. More importantly, everybody in the world knows the NYT needs to cut costs, and unless the head of the Guild is the single smartest human in the media, he has no idea how to bring the company back to profitability without pay cuts, so just start planning that alleged "vacation"!

We hear the mood at the NYT yesterday was "like a tomb." [Pic via]

The key info: "The salaries of all employees at The New York Times Media Group (with the exception of the IHT, which is working on other cost reduction measures), The Boston Globe, Boston.com and Corporate in New York will be rolled back by 5%, starting this April, and these employees will receive 10 additional days off to use before the end of the year."
[Another internal memo that we just received reveals that the company is laying off "100 employees on the business side of the Times." That's serious].

It's been clear to everyone for quite some time—including, we're sure, the paper's management—that the NYT just cannot continue to spend and operate as it historically has. Still, those same execs stubbornly waited and denied and stayed silent as things got worse.

The reason is that the New York Times regards journalism as a religious undertaking. There's nothing wrong with that per se, except for a bit of elitism. The problem is that they see their newsroom budget as the means to accomplish their holy mission, and that, therefore, cannot be touched. Before the recession hit, the company's financial mistakes included building an expensive new skyscraper, keeping its dividend too high for too long, and throwing billions down a black hole by buying back its own, now dirt-cheap stock.

More recently, it's cut its dividend down to zero, mortgaged off its own fancy new headquarters for cash, and borrowed $250 million from a shady Mexican billionaire at subprime rates. Its ongoing ad revenue decline make its quarterly reports bleak pits of despair. The company is looking to sell off assets, but it's a terrible time to be doing so.

Strangely, the newsroom budget has remained mostly unscathed through all this. But not any more. Like Conde Nast, the Times is starting out with 5% cuts, which are too small. Thirty percent would be a more realistic figure, if the goal is to get expenditures back in line with revenue projections.

So, baby steps. The bad days are starting for NYT journalists (worst part: you know you're going to have to work through your "10 additional days off"). But at least the company's finally touching the untouchable.

[BONUS: The paper is also going to save a few million in newsprint by doing away with that crazy three-page "index" in the front of the A section. Good lord that thing was dumb.]

There was a meeting on this this morning, which may still be going on. One source tells us that the NYT is asking managers to take a 5% pay cut. If pay cuts don't go through, we hear, there are threats of layoffs. Other ideas being floated are mandatory unpaid furloughs, and cutting the paper's freelance budget.

The Newspaper Guild, the union which represents Times newsroom employees, would have to sign off on any pay cuts for Guild members. Grant Glickson, the grievance representative for the Guild, said the union hasn't heard anything from the Times, but the company has asked for a meeting at 2:30pm today. "But we haven't been told what it's about," he said.

None of this is confirmed so far, but if it happens, the news should be out shortly. We have emailed the NYT for comment, and we'll let you know what we hear. In the meantime, if you know more, email us.

Hurd himself is taking a $290,000 pay cut, or 20 percent of his salary, which would look more impressive had his pay not risen 31 percent last year. HP executives are getting their pay cut 10 percent, though they can better afford it than the economically strapped rank and file.

With Congress putting executive pay under the microscope, it's a well-timed publicity stunt. The net effect on HP's financials will be small. But it's more than just a flashy PR move: It is putting a theory touted for decades in academia into practice at an unprecedented scale.

MIT economist Martin Weitzman suggested in the 1980s that instituting pay cuts instead of layoffs could make recessions shorter and less painful. By setting base salaries lower and making pay more variable with a business's financial results, companies could avoid cutting jobs and increase workers' rewards in good times. HP is trying exactly that, with a change to its bonus plans that could make up for the pay cuts if times do well.

HP is not alone. Teamster-represented truckers at YRC recently agreed to a 10 percent paycut. AMD, a Valley-based chipmaker, has instituted "temporary" pay cuts (as opposed to HP's permanent ones).

But HP, the 14th-largest public company by revenues in the U.S., has given license to the rest of the Fortune 500 to consider the idea.

It will hardly mean an end to job losses. HP is still in the middle of a three-year, 25,000-person layoff stemming from its acquisition of EDS, a rival tech-services outfit. But it could spell a future when people are laid off because their jobs truly are redundant, not because times are, as corporate memo-writers love to say, "tough all over."

There's only one problem we see with this idea: Wall Street was famous for its highly variable pay. The bonus plan may have worked for a while, but it did not end well. The high-risk, high-reward system is thoroughly out of favor now. Are we ready to become a nation of workplace gamblers? Or will America's corporate culture face death by a thousand cuts?