The protracted labor wars that famously divided so many big daily newspapers throughout the last century have lately gone the way of hot type and the manual typewriter.þþSo it has been something of a throwback in recent weeks for The Baltimore Sun to be riven by a labor dispute that has featured the training of potential replacement workers by management and a weeklong byline strike by reporters.þþSince late April, The Sun, which is owned by the Tribune company, has been negotiating a new contract with the union that represents more than 600 of the paper's editorial and business employees. The talks, which have been conducted with the assistance of a federal mediator, have so far forged little agreement on such basic issues as salary increases, job security and performance evaluations.þþThe Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, whose members voted last Wednesday to authorize their leaders to begin preparations for a strike, has scheduled another membership meeting tomorrow night, only a few hours before the current four-year contract is to expire.þþThe talks in Baltimore are being watched closely within the newspaper industry. They are the first between Tribune and the union local since the company bought the paper in 2000, absorbing it, The Los Angeles Times and other Times Mirror publications into a stable that already included The Chicago Tribune and television stations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.þþLike other media companies, Tribune, which has a representative at the bargaining table, has been trying to raise profit margins in a faltering economy. The negotiations also come as Tribune is gathering its resources in anticipation of buying more newspapers and television stations as permitted under regulations, approved earlier this month by the Federal Communications Commission, that ease so-called cross-ownership deals.þþAll this at a company that has been willing, at least historically, to endure long strikes, as it did at The Chicago Tribune in the mid-1980's and The Daily News in New York in the early 1990's.þþÿThey are prepared to play hard ball, no question about it,ÿ said Lauren Rich Fine, a research analyst at Merrill Lynch. ÿSince owning The Times Mirror properties, Tribune has done a pretty aggressive job of trying to find costs to take out as well as revenue enhancements.ÿþþÿThey're not under any particular, distinct financial pressure,ÿ Ms. Fine added of Tribune, which in January reported a 42 percent increase in earnings per share on an operating basis for last year over the previous year. ÿThis just strikes me as blocking and tackling, when you have an opportunity at a newspaper to change your cost structure.ÿþþLongtime reporters say the mood at The Sun's headquarters on North Calvert Street is reminiscent of that in 1970, when the paper's pressmen walked out for 10 weeks, in 1978, when the guild struck for three days, and in 1987, when a strike lasted six days. Previous to those actions, the guild had struck for nearly two months in 1965.þþEscalating the tension has been the paper's acknowledgment that it has been training temporary advertising salespeople and editorial employees, including some reporters who, the guild says, are being relocated from nonunion Tribune newsrooms like that of The Orlando Sentinel. þþAsked whether Tribune papers in Orlando and elsewhere were being asked to help The Sun prepare for a potential strike, Mireille Grangenois, the vice president for marketing and interactive media at The Sun, said, ÿLet's just say we have a broad array of resources we can draw on if we need to.ÿþþThe paper's editorial and business employees have responded in kind. On June 10, they chartered a plane towing a banner — ÿUnion to Sun: Fair Contract Nowÿ — that flew over Camden Yards as the Orioles played the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs. Since June 16, the paper's reporters have engaged in a byline strike, which has meant that, with only a few exceptions, every staff-written article published since then, even one reporting on the byline strike itself, has carried the byline, ÿA Sun Staff Writer.ÿþþWalter F. Roche Jr., an investigative reporter at the paper who kept his byline off five articles last week, acknowledged that such a gesture likely meant little to readers. ÿIt's more of a message to our editors that we're not about to give up any of our rights,ÿ he said.þþAmong the paper's proposals, so far rebuffed by the guild, are those that would freeze wages in the first year of a new contract, tie future salary increases for the most experienced reporters, photographers and advertising salespeople largely to their productivity and other barometers of performance, and give management the authority to transfer or lay off some employees without regard to seniority. þþEarlier this month, the company offered each employee a $1,000 signing bonus if a new contract could be ratified by 11:59 p.m. tomorrow, an offer that the union has thus far rejected as inadequate. þþÿWe're proud of our work and think we have a good paper and think we're contributing to that,ÿ said M. William Salganik, the president of the guild and a reporter who has worked at the paper for 25 years. ÿThe Tribune proposals indicate that where they're starting from is the position that they have so many lazy and incompetent and unqualified workers that the way to deal with us is to deny us pay raises, deny us cost-of-living increases, transfer us to any other job or lay us off at random.ÿþþHe added: ÿThe Sun's pattern, even in good years, is that we don't see the real offer until the last day. But we're usually closer than we are.ÿþþFor salary increases, the guild is seeking terms consistent with those contained in a recent agreement between Tribune and the union representing editorial workers at Newsday in New York, another former Times Mirror publication. In a ÿreopenerÿ to a contract originally signed in 1999 and not due to expire until 2006, Tribune stipulated a wage freeze through next April, followed by 3 percent raises in each 2004, 2005 and 2006, as well as bonuses totaling $4,000 per employee over that period.þþMs. Grangenois, the Sun vice president, said she saw a better role model in the guild's most recent contract with The Washington Post, which has provisions that permit management latitude to transfer employees and to distribute merit pay. She added that The Sun was intent on forging a ÿflexible contract that allows us to move swiftly and smartly in a rapidly changing environmentÿ and that ÿcreates a performance-driven culture.ÿ (The guild points out that the contract for The Post, which is not part of Tribune, has no wage freezes and does provide for cost-of-living increases.)þþIf an agreement is not in place by early Wednesday morning, Ms. Grangenois said, the paper's editors and business managers are prepared to put out ÿa full-size, full-run newspaperÿ without the assistance of its reporters and photographers, or its advertising sales staff, all of whom are covered by the guild contract.þþMr. Salganik, who covers health care for the paper's business section, said that he had been on strike against the paper twice in the 1980's — for a total of nine days — and that ÿit's no fun.ÿþþÿI hope I'm here Wednesday,ÿ he said, ÿmaking calls on my beat.ÿþþ
Source: NY Times
