Times are good at The Times. According to the media conglomerate’s most recent financial report, advertising is up, circulation is up, revenues are up, and income is up. “It’s all up,” New York Times Company spokesperson Catherine Mathis cheerily agrees.

Things are looking up in all in three groups the Company operates: Newspaper, which consists of The Times, The Boston Globe, 15 regional newspapers, and related businesses; Broadcasting, which includes 8 television and 2 radio stations; and Digital, which operates Internet businesses like the nytimes.com and boston.com web sites. Last year total revenues exceeded 3.2 billion dollars.

It’s no surprise that the Broadcast group is profitable, since owning television stations is a lot like owning a mint. But it is notable that Times Digital has been in the black for two and a half years –one of the first major media digital units to become profitable. The NYTimes.com web site alone boasts nearly one and a half million unique visitors each day. “We have a great ad base, and only expect growth to continue,” says Times spokesperson Christine Mohan. “It’s a win-win both for advertisers and online users.”

More than 90% of Times’ revenues come from newspaper operations, and there too it was a “very good year,” as Times CFO Len Forman noted. Advertising revenues “rose 4.2% in December, a very strong showing, particularly given that they increased 16.7% in December ‘02.”

So if times are so good at The Times — ranked first in the publishing industry for three consecutive years on Fortune’s list of America’s Most Admired Companies — why do the conglomerate’s workers say times are tough?

Arts critic Debra Cash denounces The Times as “a greedy company that has pathetic pay rates” for freelance writers like herself — rates that have been frozen for a decade. What’s worse, when the Freelancer’s Association at The Times-owned Boston Globe filed suit in a battle over ownership of online content, management played legal hardball for three years, spending nearly a million dollars contesting the lawsuit instead of being fair. Cash’s conclusion? “Surely no small group like ours can stand up to The Times Empire and expect to win.”

Things aren’t much better for unionized Globe employees, working without a contract for years. “There’s a lot of bitterness and frustration,” notes one longtime staffer. “The feeling is that The Times is making money hand over fist — and none of it is coming to us!” Others are angry over what they see as a speedup “There’s a lot of pressure to produce more,” says one staffer. “We’re working more for the same salary.”

One top Globe writer speculates that Times management feels “they paid too much for the Globe in the first place, and there’s not as much profit as they expected.”

Steven Richards, president of the Boston News Guild representing 1,200 Globe employees, agrees that morale is rotten. “There are a lot of grumbling, unhappy people,” says Richards. “We work for what a lot of people feel is the greatest paper in the free world! But just think of the hypocrisy of the editorials and public image of The Times. It’s viewed as a bastion of liberalism — but this is what they do to their workers?”

Apparently it’s the best of times, but the worst of times, at The Times.