Photo: Judy Galea
Photo: Windsor bargaining team and supporters
Local President James Thompson (seated, centre) headed the bargaining team that
included Debbie Hazlett (on his right) and Randy Morgan (on his left). The team managed to secure a 21-per-cent increase over three years for the newspaper's hopper feeders.

INDEX PAGE: James Montagano, a member of the Local executive, signals his satisfaction with the deal.

25 April 2005

Guild wins stunning 21% increase
for mailroom workers at CanWest daily

3-year deal gives hopper feeders 'huge' raise;
night-shift workers get big bump-up

Windsor Typographical Union | TNG Canada Local 30553

Members of the Guild who work as hopper feeders at The Windsor Star are the envy of their counterparts across the country today. A new contract gives them a 21-per-cent pay increase over three years and puts them in the upper echelon of wages for that type of work.

"It's a huge raise for them," says an ecstatic David Esposti, the TNG Canada Staff Representative who helped the Windsor Typographical Union negotiate the new agreement, which came in the wee hours of Friday and about 180 minutes past a strike-lockout deadline.

David Esposti

David Esposti

 

The three unions that represent workers at the CanWest-owned daily and which bargained as a joint council, held ratification votes yesterday, garnering an overall 93-per-cent thumbs up.

"There were no concessions at all" and improvements for everyone who works at the newspaper, especially night-shift workers, says Esposti.

The pay scale for hopper feeders, who run the machinery that mechanically inserts flyers and special sections into newspapers, is relative to rates for journeymen mailers. The 35 hopper feeders at the Star currently earn $13.23 an hour, or 44.5 per cent of a mailer's rate of $29.71 an hour. By the end of the agreement, the hopper feeders will be earning $17 an hour or 50 per cent of the wages paid to the 10 mailers who are fellow Guild members.

The new agreement is a big feather in the cap of James Thompson, whose recent election as president rejuvenated the Guild Local. The 50 members who work in the mailroom were "determined to get what they want" and last month voted 100-per-cent in favour of giving the bargaining team a strike mandate.

With mediation set for April 19-21 and both sides in an open position as of 12:01 a.m. on Friday, April 22 (when a strike or lockout would be legal), Thompson had predicted negotiations would go down to the wire. In the end, they went beyond it, by about three hours.

The bargaining team emerged bleary-eyed but triumphant with a deal that provides for salary increases of 2.5, 2.5 and 3.0 per cent over the three years of the contract that runs until Dec. 31, 2007.

In addition, the night shift differential immediately increases by $1.50 to $14.50 per shift. This represents a big win for the Guild Local, says Esposti, "because most of our people work nights." He says it will amount to $72.50 a week more for working nights and is well above the average of $8-$10 a shift other daily newspapers pay.

Another plus for the Local, whose members belong to the ITU Negotiated Pension Plan, is that the employer will increase contributions by 50 cents per shift in each of the next three years. By the end of the agreement, says Esposti, the Star will be paying $14 a shift, up from $12.50.

The employer in the end backed off two highly contentious issues that could have precipitated a strike.

Members of the Canadian Auto Workers (with 150 employees in reader sales and service, editorial, advertising and the business office), and the Communications Energy and Paperworkers union (20 workers in the pressroom) stood firm with the Guild in refusing to give up an early-retirement provision the employer wanted to delete from the three contracts.

The clause permits employees with sufficient years of service to quit working at age 60 and for five years collect half wages and full benefits. At age 65, the employee is officially retired and collects a full pension.

Management had also proposed a change to wording in the contract that the CEP interpreted as an encroachment on their jurisdiction in the pressroom. Eventually, both sides agreed to leave the wording intact.

Two other issues that Thompson identified as possible sticking points involved benefits. Both sides agreed to maintain the status quo in that employees will continue to co-pay dental plan premiums and the employer will pay 100 per cent of medical plan premiums.