Detroit News and Free Press Approve Tentative Contract
The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press reached a tentative contract with employees Tuesday that smoothed the start of their joint operating agreement and calmed fears of holiday advertisers.
“We’re delighted we have a settlement,” said Robert Giles, president and publisher of the News, owned by Gannett Co. “We expected to be able to work it out on an amicable basis, and we did.”
The contract proposal at the nation’s ninth- and 10th-largest newspapers was reached after an all-night bargaining session.
The proposal is to be presented to drivers and circulation workers, editorial employees, typographers, mailers and photoengravers. The five unions had set a Thursday strike deadline.
Terms of the tentative contract were not immediately released, though the News quoted a union source as saying the two-year agreement would provide raises totaling $80 a week, plus two-week bonuses.
“It’s the best that the unions felt they could achieve,” said Lou Mleczko, president of the Newspaper Guild Local 22, representing about 900 editorial employees.
Joe Fundaro, interim secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 372, which represents 1,100 workers in the merged circulation department serving the two newspapers, said ratification meetings would be scheduled Sunday.
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