October 20, 2003

Sun Times Tentative agreement

The editorial employees at the Chicago-Sun-Times reached a tentative agreement in contract talks at approximately 2 p.m. Wednesday, almost two hours after they were scheduled to go on strike.

Members of the Chicago Newspaper Guild at the Sun-Times had gathered their personal possessions and had put on their coats planning to walk out at 12:01 p.m. when Guild negotiators gave the paper a last-minute offer. About two hours later negotiators revealed they had reached a tentative agreement.

The three-year agreement calls for raises of three percent each year, a $1670 signing bonus, an increase of $10 per week in company payments for medical insurance and full domestic partner benefits for union and non-union employees. Guild members are supposed to vote on the proposal next week.

“They didn’t get everything they wanted but we probably gave up more than we would have otherwise,” said company negotiator Ted Rilea.

The Guild had requested a seven percent increase for the first year of the contract, and 17.5 percent over three years, reacting to disclosures earlier this year that company officials, in particular Conrad Black, the former CEO of Hollinger International, Inc., and former Sun-Times publisher David Radler had been accused of taking as much as $400 million out of company profits through non-compete agreements made to the two officials by purchasers of newspapers Hollinger had sold and through payments to a firm controlled by Black and Radler called Ravelston which handled Hollinger’s accounting and management services at an exorbitant cost.

Guild negotiators had said that Radler had lied to them in 2001 negotiations when he told them the company couldn’t afford to give them a reasonable salary increase.

“We’re relieved. This was all about fairness, this was all about justice,” said Sun-Times political reporter Scott Fornek, spokesman for the Guild negotiating team. “The signing bonus, there’s some restitution there for money that was taken away.  We’re not getting all of it back but we’re getting a significant share back.’’

Company officials blamed the substandard contract the Guild received in 2001 to the adverse business conditions and the alleged national recession that followed the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

“It was a bad time for them to have a contract expire,” Rilea said. “I understand that (the Black/Radler betrayal) but that’s the past and that’s what we tried to explain to them.  It’s all about the future and going forward. We recognized that there was some fairness that had to come into play here.’’

Rilea said that “the deadline made both sides more focused than they had been in the past. We knew if we didn’t get it done there would be some problems.’

Since Hollinger removed both Black and Radler from company operations, hiring has increased within Hollinger’s Chicago Group and editorial employees have praised the new publisher, John Cruickshank, for avoiding the tension and miserliness of the Radler regime.

However when it came down to dollars and cents, as well as the cost of medical insurance, the two sides resumed the stance taken at previous negotiations when Radler and Black were in their prime. While the Guild asked for a seven percent increase in the first year, the company responded by proposing a two percent increase and five-and-three-quarters percent over three years.

Assisted by a federal mediator, negotiations resumed Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. and went all night until 2 p.m. the next day.

Wednesday afternoon Cruickshank was quoted as saying that he felt the bonus payment to Guild employees was appropriate because, he said, they had not fully shared  in the company’s success for the past three years.

The two sides also reportedly agreed to set up a Guild-management “Roundtable’’ to discuss outstanding issues before undergoing the traditional grievance process.

Among the most heartening things to come out of the strike threat by Guild supporters was the support of columnists like Roger Ebert, Rick Telander, Debra Pickett, Mark Brown and Michael Sneed to support the strike and their fellow employees.

The newspapers represented by the Guild within Hollinger’s Chicago Group includes the Sun-Times, the newspapers of Pioneer press, the Waukegan news-Sun and the Joliet News Herald. Non-union newspapers of the Hollinger Group include the Daily Southtown, the Star newspapers, Lerner newspapers, and newspapers in Elgin, Aurora, Naperville and Hinsdale.