March 25, 2004

After twenty-one months

New Pioneer Press pact

By Lynne Stiefel
Pioneer Press Editorial Unit Chair

Twenty-one months after our contract expired and two months after it was terminated, the Pioneer Press Editorial Unit ratified a new agreement with Pioneer Press that expires at the end of 2007.

We believe we’d still be languishing at the bargaining table if fate in the form of a juicy scandal hadn’t intervened. Jim Romensko’s headline on his Web site introducing  Michael Miner’s Feb. 5 article in the Chicago Reader about our little squabble probably explains it best: “Hollinger hoopla helps management, union comes to terms.”

Our negotiations were going nowhere when, in November 2003, someone took seriously the complaints of a few disgruntled Hollinger International investors about CEO Conrad Black and Sun-Times Publisher David Radler. Effects of the expanding scandal eventually trickled down to the Pioneer level, but not before the Guild was tested with a deficient package from which management refused to budge.

The unit Jan. 4 soundly rejected the offer and authorized the negotiating committee to pursue job actions up to and including a strike. We were well on our way toward a campaign of job actions when the company’s negotiating team sent a clear signal that they were serious about a settlement.

We ratified the agreement Feb. 4, but it was more with a sigh than a smile. The compensation package we approved would have been understandable in times of an uncertain economy, but was only adequate for an editorial work force that had seen its ranks slashed by 30 percent since 1998 under the penny-pinching Black regime.

We made some concessions on health care, but our benefits remain competitive and we have an option to escape to a plan of our own choosing – with the company paying an equal percentage of its costs – if we deem it necessary. We strengthened language governing who can and cannot be involuntarily transferred between our seven offices. Reporters will be paid for business use of personal cellular telephones. And we retained a long list of working conditions and rights that management sought to strip from the contract.

The biggest payoff: Raises retroactive to the expiration of the previous contract in June 2002. To the last, management had wanted to stick us with a measly signing bonus in lieu of retro pay until someone further up the Hollinger food chain ordered otherwise.

While we now have a contract in place for the next three-plus years, it along with Pioneer’s future is far from certain. We remain on the auction block while Hollinger executives sort through the bids, and there are many labor options available to a potential new owner.