24 December 2003

Shrinking Local draws a firm line on further downsizing

Moncton Typographical Union | TNG Canada Local 30636

The number of unionized staff at the Irving-owned Times & Transcript in Moncton, New Brunswick, is tiny compared to what it was 20 years ago, but members are determined to stop giving in to management demands to further shrink the Local.

That unmistakable message was delivered to publisher Victor Mlodecki when the union's negotiating team was given a unanimous strike vote at a Dec. 6 meeting. Mediation is expected to be scheduled for January.

Rod Allen, president of the Moncton Typographical Union, says that only one of the unit's eligible members failed to show up for the vote and that absence was unavoidable.

"Believe me, everyone wanted to be there for this," says Allen. "Many of our members are younger but, like me, some remember there were more than 200 members here in the early 1980s. Now we're down to 35 – or 52 – counting members who await an arbitrator's ruling on what we believe to have been their unfair dismissal almost three years ago.

"But however overdue," Allen declares, "we must draw the line at last."

The highly profitable Brunswick News Inc. is owned by the mammoth Irving Group of companies. BNI owns the Times & Transcript, all other English language dailies in the province, the majority of its weekly newspapers and several important broadcast outlets.

Negotiations with the employer began in August but lasted only about three hours.

At the conciliation stage in late October and early November, the Local succeeded in resisting some employer efforts to continue the downsizing, but other issues remain.

The employer seeks to replace the union's negotiated pension plan with a group RSP, downgrade the vacation progression schedule, replace workers employed at the negotiated journeyman rate with workers at half that wage and other measures.

The company has offered a two-year contract with a wage increase of 1.5 per cent per year.

Since the group RSP proposal would have the company match employee contributions to a maximum of four per cent, the union wants a four-per-cent annual wage increase just to break even in a province where government has not been able to control energy and insurance prices.

Allen says that, for the sake of stability, the union also wants a three-year term.

TNG Canada Eastern Staff Rep David Esposti puts the negotiations in Moncton more succinctly: The employer wants to "gut the contract."

A decade of relentless pressure and trimming has turned Local 30636 into a mere shadow of its former self, agrees Esposti, who says publisher Mlodecki has a history of paring workplaces to the bone.

"When he joined Brunswick News, he first tested his methods at the Fredericton Daily Gleaner and then honed them at the Saint John Telegraph-Journal. Now he's turned his sights on Moncton," says Esposti. "Anywhere Victor goes, trouble follows."

The publisher tipped his hand in Moncton when he laid off a handful of pressmen and ran short-staffed for more than a year, waiting for their recall rights to expire. Then he was free to hire new help, but he called them "paper handlers" and is paying them $13 an hour, half the rate a pressman earns. Mlodecki is trying to insert a new classification – paper handlers – in this contract to legitimize the tactic.

After conciliation talks broke off in the fall, the Local's negotiating team asked the provincial government for a no-board report, which was received in late November.

Allen called a meeting of the membership as soon as the required grace period had elapsed and, after a thorough examination of the company offer, received his unanimous vote.

Since then the employer and the Local have agreed to meet again and aim to arrange dates early in the new year. A no-strike no-lockout agreement is in effect until then.