April 25, 2003

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Agreement close on
digital photo issues
at Pioneer Press unit

By Lynne Stiefel
Pioneer Press unit chair

Technologically, the Pioneer Press Editorial unit is finally getting a chance to enter the 21st Century, albeit a few years later than other newspapers our size.

As of this writing, the company (which comprises 49 flags in north, northwest and west suburban Chicago) is installing a Mac-based computer system with Baseview software progressively in each of its seven offices. (Two offices are hooked in so far, as well as the layout desk). The blue Macs (the discontinued model) replace a mainframe system of "dumb" terminals installed in the mid-1980s by a firm that went out of business a decade ago. The system was so outmoded that it was unable to recognize any year beyond 1999. So although it has been 2003 for several months, it has been 1986 on story slugs for Pioneer editorial employees.

But even that technological leap has been painful for Pioneer management. It reluctantly is allowing editorial employees to have e-mail at our new terminals (it's the only way we can send messages to each other in other offices on the new system), but refuses Internet access on any terminals but editors'. So we lowly reporters will continue to stand in line at the single Internet-connected 5-year-old PC in each office for research and even to call up our own stories in our Web site archive.

Our photo system will be going digital under an agreement with the company that's part of our on-going contract negotiations. Pioneer is buying the digital equipment it thinks will be ample for the photo staff. We're glad to see it, but hope some of the repair and pool lens logjams we anticipate can be avoided.

As for contract negotiations (the old contract expired May 2002), we remain well mired in the Dark Ages. With an intractable publisher calling all the shots, a team of company negotiators is little more than cardboard cut outs at the bargaining table. Progress has come in fits and starts over the past year at the table.

It took the first two months for the publisher to agree to a site where we could even meet. Our unit refused to split the cost of hotel meeting rooms (as had been dictated in the past). The publisher refused to allow us to meet at any company location, another past dictate. After a few sessions at the CWA's Itasca headquarters, we were moved to the Sun-Times building in downtown Chicago. That's more than hour each way by train for us suburban editorial employees. But so be it.

 We spent half a dozen sessions trying to work out transfer language, since the company complained that the expired contract makes it virtually impossible to fill a vacant position by involuntarily moving someone to another office. We came up with a process based on seniority and fair geographic limitations (our offices are located between Waukegan on the north and Oak Park on the south). But the publisher insisted on the "flexibility" to move all but the most senior employees wherever he wanted. With the news staff shrunken (down from 120 in 1997 to the current 90) and no end to the shrinkage in sight, continually transferring employees between offices to "cover" news is the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. No thanks.

There's still a bunch of company clutter (gutting severance pay, eliminating by-line refusal rights, extending probation from two to three months) that inexplicably remains on the table.

Meanwhile, morale has not bounced back from March 2002, when four editorial employees were unceremoniously pink slipped. Three of the four have been rehired since then, but only to fill other vacancies. Despite their rehiring, attrition was still vicious. We are stretched so thin that even the Reader's Michael Miner recognized it. With .62 reporter, .16 photographer, .14 sports writer and about a tenth of an editorial assistant per community, that's "guaranteeing coverage more like a thong than a blanket," he wrote in a March 22, 2002 "Hot Type" column. Currently, it's hit or miss whether a vacancy will get filled.

Coupled with attrition are the company's efforts to nibble away at Guild work with increased use of stringers, exempts and interns. In a bold move more than a year ago, two of the three photo chiefs were in essence turned into staff photographers when they were inserted into two staff positions left vacant. We're in the midst of an arbitration contesting that. We've also got arbitrations pending on the increased use of stringers to replace unfilled sports reporting vacancies and the assignment of a managing editor to take over food section duties following the death of a Guild-eligible employee.

That amazing part is how professional, motivated and hard-working our news staff is, in the face of a publisher who throws up every roadblock for the Guild he can and senior managers seemingly interested only in preserving their jobs. This Guild's members make every battle worth it.