On Sunday, former Green Bay Packers beat reporter Greg A. Bedard, now working for the Boston Globe, published an article stating that the Green Bay Packers were one of the teams that has cut pay for assistant coaches during the lockout. That article is now behind a paywall, but you can find a summary from JSOnline right here. It turns out that Larry Kennan, the director of the NFL Coaches Association, gave Bedard false information and that the Packers have not cut any pay for their assistant coaches at the moment. Kennan issued an apology through Bedard at the Boston Globe today.
I am obviously unfamiliar with the intimate details of the finances of the Packers, but I think that most of us would call their current practice of not cutting employee salaries "doing the right thing." Assistant coaches have little to nothing to do with the current lockout and I'm sure that most of them would be willing to work constantly with players if they were currently allowed to do so. If the Packers have the means to pay their assistant coaches, they should do so, and I'm happy that's exactly what they're doing.
However, it's not clear exactly how long the Packers will have the means to pay their assistants. Here's a quote from Kennan's statement in Bedard's post, emphasis mine.
"That information I provided was incorrect. I called them and apologized, and want to get the record set straight. The Packers have not withheld any pay and have no plans to do so."
While that may be true, JSOnline had a report back on March 12 stating that the Packers have a contingency plan in place to cut salary for some employees should it become necessary. It's quite possible that the financial situation at 1265 has become more clear in the last two months and the Packers have determined that they will not have to cut pay for their employees at any point, but at this time, I'm going to take Kennan's quote about the Packers having no plans to cut salaries with a grain of salt.
Though, to be fair, that JSOnline article specifically mentioned executives, Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy without mentioning assistants. It is entirely possible that the Packers' contingency plan for if/when the financial situation goes south does not include cutting any assistant coach salaries.