Negotiations, Strike Plans at Union, Tribune Stalled

Contract negotiations broke off early Saturday morning between the San Diego Newspaper Guild and management of the San Diego Union and Tribune, but employees decided not to call an immediate strike as had been threatened during the week.

The situation remained unsettled throughout the day Saturday, with labor union leaders saying that they could order a walkout at any time “of maximum inconvenience” to the newspapers, and with management asserting their ongoing readiness to continue publishing under any circumstances.

No new negotiations were set, although both sides expressed willingness to meet on short notice to try and tackle again several obstacles in the way of a new contract.

“A lot of thinking went into the decision (not to strike) last night (early Saturday),” George Flynn, a Union reporter and chairman of the guild’s bargaining committee, said Saturday. “We want to get maximum effectiveness from a strike, and with (the fact) that the company had a week’s warning about one, we weren’t about to give them any advance notice for the thing when it comes.”

Flynn added, “Had the heart been making the decision last night, we would have all walked, but we’re putting our heads into this as well.”

The bargaining breakdown came shortly before 12:30 a.m. when negotiators for Copley Newspapers, publishers of the morning Union and evening Tribune, rejected a last-minute guild proposal for a three-year contract that included a major concession to do away with the closed shop that currently forces all employees represented by the guild, whether members or not, to pay dues.

The guild proposal calls for a 10% wage increase in the first year and 5% increases during the second and third years. The guild is bargaining agent for 1,150 employees in the editorial, advertising, circulation, business, advertising, library and maintenance departments of the two papers, with 750 members. Employees have been working without a contract since June, 1988.

The company has offered only a one-year contract with a 10% raise for most employees, except for an 8% raise for circulation district managers and advertising sales people, with an additional 2% possible as incentive bonuses for them.

In addition to the dispute over contract length, the two sides also disagree over the company’s demand that some circulation workers begin using their own vehicles, rather than company vans, as the company switches to a new distribution system in certain county areas.

Flynn said the guild does not understand the company’s insistence on only a one-year contract, since it has negotiated three-year agreements with pressmen and mailers. The agreement with the mailers was reached Friday and that union’s 90 members will vote on ratification early next month.

“It’s hard to argue that there are benefits for either the publisher (Helen Copley) or the employees to resume this madness nine months from now,” Flynn said. He said the company’s refusal to budge has angered a lot of employees “because previously there were people who were sitting on the fence, thinking that the company would not try to strip us of everything.”

Herbert Klein, editor-in-chief of Copley Newspapers, said Saturday that the issue of contract length concerns management because “we think there are a lot of smaller but highly important issues that need to be cleared up” and because they probably won’t be solved in the present negotiations, “we will want to get into them during further contract talks in the near future.”

Klein said that those issues are largely circulation-related, because the company wants to “modernize our distribution” as it shifts to area distribution systems where papers will be given to circulation agents from regional points rather than having all copies picked up at the Mission Valley plant.

“I think the thing we are pleased with, the best thing we have going, is that people review what we have offered, which is a 10% increase in pay, which I believe is the largest, or one of the largest pay increases given in the newspaper industry in a great number of years,” Klein said.

Guild officials, while pleased that management has met their demand for a 10% pay increase for one year, add, however, that they view the raise as only 3.3% per year because employees have had no increase since the last contract expired.

Klein said that management remains ready to publish using replacement workers it has advertised for and any guild employees who resign and cross picket lines. “We have made no secret that we have trained for and are fully trained to publish,” he said.

While Klein said he was “beyond the point” of being surprised or not surprised that a strike was not called early Saturday, he added, “It may be that (the guild) is concerned about the number of people who have resigned from the guild.”

Flynn said that the guild is ready to resume negotiations at any time, and Klein said, “I know we are prepared to meet and hope it will occur sometime soon.”

Klein called the ongoing dispute “a distraction” that has caused morale problems in the newsroom, although he said that “the quality of reporting remains high.”

Meanwhile, the chairman of the San Diego County United Way fund-raising campaign denied a report in the guild’s newsletter Friday that said the organization had made a $175,000 contribution to the strike fund. “That is absolutely not true, we did not authorize it, it did not come up, we don’t make those kinds of donations, and I know of no resource fund used that way at all at United Way,” Frank Panarisi said.