BNG Contract Communications

To the Boston Newspaper Guild Membership,

If you were thinking of voting NO on December 13, consider the following:

In Philadelphia, less than six months after Knight Ridder sold the Inquirer and Daily News to a local group, Guild members have taken a strike vote, and management has hired replacement workers. Negotiations are ongoing, with management seeking to freeze pensions and to require the use of unpaid time off before sick leave kicks in. A compromise was reached on a management proposal seeking the right to lay off Guild members with no regard for seniority. The parties have not begun discussing wages, and management has threatened to layoff up to 150 newsrooms Guild members. (11/10/06, Guild Reporter; Editor & Publisher)

In Toledo, where several Unions have been locked out and the Guild is helping run successful advertising and circulation boycotts, management is seeking severe wage cuts and sweeping management rights clause that would gut union security provisions. The owner has threatened a similar strategy at its paper in Pittsburgh. (9/15/06, Guild Reporter)

In San Jose, where the Guild local has more than 300 fewer members than it did in 2000, a tentative agreement was reached this week. Early reports say the deal would limit layoffs to about 30, with another 45 jobs to be outsourced to a call center, and would freeze pensions. The two-year deal includes annual 2 percent raises and increases employees’ health care contributions to 20 or 30 percent of cost (depending on the plan). (11/10/06, Guild Reporter; Editor & Publisher)

In Akron, newsroom staff has been cut by about 25 percent, and in Seattle members recently ratified a contract with a two-year wage freeze. (9/15/06, Guild Reporter)

Closer to home, in Manchester, N.H., management seeks the right to unfettered use of part-timers to the point of replacing full-timers, the right to layoff based on new technology, and to basically gut the Guild contract with no movement by management over more than a dozen bargaining sessions. (NE District Council meeting, 11/19/06)

At the Boston Herald, Guild members have ratified a deal that will defer previously negotiated wage increases for more than two years; Guild member there pay approximately 80 percent (to the company’s 20 percent) of the cost of health insurance. The split at the Globe currently is about 30 percent Guild members-70 percent Company.)

And in New York, Barry Lipton, president of the New York Guild for about 25 years, said, “The Times is in the worst shape I’ve ever seen. There’s no way to sugarcoat it.” There is talk there of layoffs in the newsroom, something that Lipton said had previously been unthinkable. (NEDC meeting, 11/19/06) The value of Times stock has fallen more than 50 percent in the last 18 months. (NYT Co. website)

At the Globe, advertising revenue (through October) had fallen more than 10 percent in 2006 from 2005 (NYT Co. press release, 11/16/06) and projects to be off more than $50 million fro the year. (NYT Co. website)

Circulation, which has been in steady decline the last five years, has dropped from 451,471 daily and 707,813 Sunday in September 2004 to 379,288 daily and 604,068 Sunday as of this past March. (NYT Co. website). And the Wall Street Journal recently reported the Globe is expected to operate at a loss for the year. (10/19/06, WSJ)

The agreement we are voting on includes virtually no language concessions (performance-based discipline provisions have been in our contract for many years) and will improve our Union’s position long term through the addition of Boston.com work.

Given the financial difficulties facing our entire industry and the Globe in particular (we are recognized as one of the hardest-hit metro papers in the country), the Union’s Executive Committee strongly believes it would be short-sighted to reject this contract.

In Solidarity,

Daniel B. Totten, President
Steve P. Richards, Vice President
Patrice Sneyd, Treasurer
Jenna Russell, Recording Secretary
Kathie Dalton, At Large
Scott Steeves, At Large
Carl Younger, At Large

December 5, 2006