The union objecting to Tribune’s proposed payment of $46 million in management bonuses says they would require 10 percent of the company’s cash flow — an unprecedented level, Editor and Publisher reports.

I have to say it pains me a little to come down against paying these bonuses (as if my stance matters), because I am aware that some of my former colleagues in the business are part of the management incentive plan and are deserving of whatever pay they get. They have endured more misery in the workplace than I had stomach for.

The problem, as I see it, is a moral one; and perhaps that is why Tribune’s current management doesn’t get it. How can a company, crying poverty, push so many employees onto the street (to the detriment of its product, I might add) and then justify enormous bonuses to the people who did the pushing? It sounds like something a Third World dictatorship would do. There is something terribly wrong with a business ethic that sees things Tribune’s way.