St. Paul Guild

The Newspaper Guild at the St. Paul Pioneer Press

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Welcome to the internet home of the Newspaper Guild unit representing union workers at Minnesota's oldest daily newspaper.

There are about 380 of us now working for MediaNews, a privately held newspaper company that acquired the paper and three other Knight Ridder publications from the McClatchy Company, after McClatchy bought its San Jose-based rival and broke it up.

We are one of seven Guild newspaper units in Minnesota, including our colleagues and rivals at the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune. In St. Paul, we are currently working under a contract that dates to 2002 and expires in 2007. There are many fewer of us now than when we negotiated that contract, after a round of buyouts and layoffs in late 2006 and January 2007.

It's a tough business and getting tougher every day.

Read here about our work to keep the Pioneer Press an asset to the community, an independent voice and a provider of good jobs in our region.

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What the company proposes:

to remove provisions that now allow employees to return to their job if a transfer or promotion doesn't work out and that allow employees to decline transfers without repercussions to their future with the paper
to be able to hire more people with less than one year of experience in the editorial, circulation, classified and accounting departments
to reduce severance to 12 weeks of pay, from 38, and provide it only to people who are laid off (Severance is already denied to anyone terminated for proven dishonesty or who provokes their own termination in order to get a severance check.)
to make it so subjective standards - "job performance, contributions to the company, the ability to do the remaining work" - can be taken into account when there are layoffs, in addition to seniority
to be able to remove union work in a way that would cause maintenance and systems employees to be laid off
to remove required preferences for internal applicants when hiring
to be able to make full-time positions part-time without Guild agreement
to eliminate newsroom team leaders from Guild coverage, which would take away their contractual protections
to exclude from union membership people who work for online and niche publications
to be able to require reporters and photographers to do each other’s work
to be able to make it a requirement that employees own cars
to be able to test employees for drug use
to be able to hire freelancers to write for any section of the newspaper

Concerns expressed so far with company proposal:

The combination of looser freelance hiring, discretionary and less costly layoffs and a lower required minimum for future hires could effectively put higher-paid employees at risk of termination, given that they could be replaced with freelancers or a cheaper new hire.
Subjective layoff standards are exactly that - subjective. Seniority is objective.
Having to pay higher severance may discourage the company from laying people off; lower severance may make it an easier choice to cut staff instead of looking harder at other ways to reduce costs.

What the Guild proposes:

to provide a longer and specific notice to people who could be affected by a reduction in force
to discuss a new standard for when the company conducts layoffs
to increase maximum severance, to 52 weeks
to discuss how audio and video apply to the reporter-photographer provision

July 12, 2007