St. Paul Guild

Bargaining Bulletin #4 /Fourth session, July 24, 2007

MediaNews-Pioneer Press negotiators on Tuesday rejected a Guild proposal to limit contract talks to crucial issues that would have allowed both sides to focus the talks and set up a shorter bargaining process.

The Guild made an offer last week to limit talks to nine issues.

The company opened Tuesday’s session by offering a counterproposal that would have more than doubled the Guild’s list of topics. The company’s add-ons included implementing a two-tier wage scale, reducing sick leave, cutting short-term disability pay, allowing factors other than seniority to determine layoffs, changing how vacation is earned, reducing mileage reimbursements and cutting severance pay from 38 to 12 weeks.

The company also wanted to discuss excluding team leaders from the union and eliminating provisions that prevented photographers and reporters from being required to do each others’ jobs.

Pioneer Press Labor Relations Director Marc Chrismer said the company gave up 22 issues when making its counteroffer -- a move he characterized as “quite substantial.”

“Conditions are not good, and for us to give up that much, to me, shows a lot of movement,” Chrismer said.

But Guild lead negotiator Darren Carroll said that the complexity and number of issues the company wanted to keep on the table -– and the degree to which they would change the workplace -– undercut the goal of speeding up contract talks by limiting the topics.

"The intention that we had in proposing the list that we did to you, the list of nine, was to capture issues that were shared on both sides – issues that had been identified as priority items. In short, we don't think the list that you have given us would allow us to expedite the bargaining."

"Some of ... those issues would do the kind of harm to the working conditions and the working environment that would undermine the place," he said.

To speed up the process, last week the Guild had offered to limit talks to:

* wages, so long as the company dropped its two-tier wage-scale proposal.

* retirement benefits

* advertising commission rates, rules and benefits

* medical, dental and vision insurance

* training

* newsroom freelance restrictions

* multimedia issues

* business integration

* the creation of a joint committee that would give employees a say in how the Pioneer Press charts its future.

To that list, the company wanted to add provisions that would:

* establish a two-tier pay scale

* cut sick leave, reduce short- and long-term disability and eliminate retiree medical benefits

* schedule photographers without regard to seniority and allow photographers and reporters to do each others’ jobs

* change vacation accrual to an “earn-as-you-go” policy

* cut severance pay from 38 to 12 weeks and limit severance to only those employees who are laid off

* allow factors other than seniority to determine layoffs

* require employees to forfeit their right to file grievances after 30 days, down from the current 180 days

* exclude team leaders from guild membership

* remove the right of a Guild member to return to a previous position after being promoted to a job for which they are later deemed unqualified

* exclude employees of niche publications from the union

* waive the union’s right to bargain over work rules

* require employees to own a car and cut mileage rates from the IRS-determined level of 48.5 cents per mile to 35 cents per mile.

Later, the two sides tentatively agreed to leave unchanged more than 30 contract provisions that neither side had proposed to alter, such as the right to withhold a byline, veterans’ rights and preserving non-discrimination language.

The two sides meet again Tuesday, July 31, and will discuss employee training, the pension plan and preserving the contract after any sale of the company.

The company was represented by Barb Cartalucca, Marc Chrismer and Thom Fladung.

The Guild was represented by Darren Carroll, Marilyn Clements, Lance Forys, Julie Forster, Alex Friedrich, Meggen Lindsay, Duane Maxson, Dave Noble, Jim Ragsdale and Jack Sullivan.

-- Meggen Lindsay