Press-Telegram Staffers Ask Readers to Drop Subscriptions

Press-Telegram reporters and other workers in Long Beach have been knocking on doors, standing outside supermarkets and even cruising a few bars to ask readers to cancel their subscriptions.

Members of two unions at the daily newspaper have called for a subscription boycott in an effort to gain more leverage in protracted contract negotiations with the company. Union members said they have collected about 1,500 cards from readers willing to discontinue their subscriptions. The cancellations would take effect if the Los Angeles Newspaper Guild decides to turn in the cards.

The company’s contract with the guild, which represents 210 editorial staffers, custodians, clerks, truck drivers and circulation workers, expired more than a year ago. About 35 production workers represented by the Communications Workers of America have been without a contract more than two years.

“It’s a paradoxical situation,” Press-Telegram reporter Dorothy Korber said of the subscription boycott. “You work all day to put out the paper, and at night, you go out and ask people to cancel their subscriptions.”

“It’s really weird encouraging people to cancel their subscriptions. But it’s better than being on strike and losing my home,” said Korber, who, with most of the reporters, has collected subscription cancellations from shoppers at supermarkets and other sites.

The paper’s executives said that such a drive in the long run could only hurt the employees.

“It seems to me that it’s counterproductive for newspaper employees to hurt their employers,” said Bob Rowell, the Press-Telegram’s vice president of operations. “It’s probably a legitimate action from a legal standpoint. (But) it doesn’t mean that it’s not boneheaded from the other standpoint.”

Publisher Peter B. Ridder called the union’s drive a tactic born of “desperation.” Union leaders said they want to avoid a strike because they fear that they would lose their jobs. However, Ridder said: “We have no intention of locking them out. We have a lot of good employees here.”

Last Tuesday, management made a new offer, which the guild membership is scheduled to vote on today. Executives said the new offer is not the result of the boycott effort.

Guild president Todd Cunningham said he believes the members may reject the offer.

The remaining roadblock is the company’s push to forbid employees from carrying on job actions such as a subscription boycott. Any action that could hurt the company economically would be forbidden under the proposed contract.

“That absolutely binds the hands of the union,” Cunningham said. But Ridder described the disputed clause as “a very reasonable request. In the Greater Los Angeles area, no other newspaper faces the threat of economic actions while employees are working.”

Both sides seemed to hit a wall last month when the company presented its “last and final” offer, which the union rejected on Feb. 6 by a 123-16 vote. But they met three times in the last two weeks. The latest offer would provide a 3% pay raise last year, 3.6% this year, and 4% each of the next two years.

Union members have in the past year resorted to other demonstrations. In one action, about 150 employees and supporters picketed Feb. 28 outside the newspaper’s downtown office, one year after the guild contract expired.

Subscription boycotts have been used at times in other newspaper union-management disputes, according to Linda Foley of the Newspaper Guild in Washington. The success rate for such boycotts varies, said Foley, executive secretary for the guild’s contracts committee.

“Sometimes, just the threat of a campaign itself” is enough to push a company to settle a contract, Foley said. But at newspapers such as the Sacramento Bee, boycott subscriptions have failed to elicit enough cancellation pledges to make an impact, she said.

The Press-Telegram’s circulation is nearly 136,000 daily and 157,000 on Sundays, according to company officials.

The union is banking on the support of other large unions in the area. The Press-Telegram employees have won the endorsement of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, the Teachers Assn. of Long Beach, the Long Beach Police Officers Assn., the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters Union.

The union’s efforts have generated criticism from a deputy city attorney who recently questioned the newspaper’s credibility in covering protracted contract negotiations between the police union and city management. The guild has publicly backed the Police Officers Assn., and the police union has reciprocated.

Cunningham said reporters avoided soliciting the support of sources and officials on their beats, such as police. Cunningham, who asked the Police Officers Assn. for support, is the newspaper’s entertainment editor. “We don’t even want to give an appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Rich Archbold, the paper’s managing editor, said the paper’s coverage of the ongoing dispute between police and the city has not been compromised. He called such allegations “nonsense.” Ridder agreed, saying that “the newspaper employees continue to separate issues of news coverage and bargaining.”