13 January 2007

Publisher sets sour tone
at outset of collective bargaining

Victoria-Vancouver Island Newspaper Guild | TNG Canada Local 30223

If Bob McKenzie was hoping to be nominated Best Boss of 2007, he blew any chance of it only a week into the new year.

When the Guild bargaining team sits down on Monday — for a second day of negotiations with the Victoria Times Colonist — souring the atmosphere in the room will be the words of the daily's publisher on their first day of talks, Jan. 8:

"I'm not as concerned about morale as you think I should be — it's overrated."

And with that setting the tenor for talks to renew a collective agreement that expired on New Year's Day, management at the newspaper owned by CanWest Global proceeded to make it clear to the Guild that it is not interested in any proposed improvements to contract language nor any cost changes — unless, of course, they're in the company's favour.

Chris Carolan, president of the Local that represents 200 members who work in editorial, advertising, circulation, maintenance, information technology and the business department, can be forgiven if he seems somewhat bewildered by the employer's parsimonious attitude.

"The publisher says we have one of the better contracts in the newspaper business and they are not willing to compromise. He is painting a picture of a newspaper that can't afford to do anything that lessens their flexibility because money is not coming in the way it used to," says Carolan.

And yet, he points out, management of CanWest MediaWorks Income Fund, which includes the Times Colonist in its stable of 10 metro daily newspapers, three days later was singing its own praises to unitholders.

“We have shown we have a stable group of newspaper assets ... which we fully expect to be the backbone of this company for many, many years to come,” Chairman Peter Liba said at the annual meeting in Toronto on Jan. 11. "... Every year, faced with new competitors from all corners, newspapers in general – and ours in particular – continue to grow and prosper.”

It's not as if the Guild is seeking exorbitant improvements in their contract, says Carolan. "We in the Guild just want more flexibility to plan our lives."

The company, on the other hand, seems intent on taking backward steps. For instance, management wants to reduce the amount of notice required on scheduling from 4.5 weeks to two.

The brass also wants to be able to hire casual employees and provide no benefits except paid vacation; make inroads on sick-leave provisions; and reduce the employer/employee split on payment of premiums for extended health benefits from 90/10 to 80/20. (Meanwhile, CanWest pays 100 per cent of such premiums for employees at the Vancouver Sun and Province.)

"But the big thing that really infuriates (the membership)," says Carolan, "is the company's blatant and opportunistic attack on Guild jurisdiction" by confirming its intention to unilaterally remove the Sports Editor classification from the Guild contract and make it a management position.

The announcement came less than a month after Times Colonist Sports Editor Gavin Fletcher, 39, was killed in a single-vehicle car accident two weeks before Christmas. (Carolan reports that his Local, as well as the Ottawa Newspaper Guild, have already made donations to a trust fund set up for Fletcher's two young daughters, and more Guild Locals are expected to follow suit.)

Carolan says his Local responded to the company's announcement by advising that the elimination of the Sports Editor classification is now a subject of negotiations.

VVING and TNG/CWA Local 30403, which represents about 40 workers in the mailroom, are the only TNG Canada Locals that participate in a Joint Council for bargaining with a daily newspaper. They team up with the Communications Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) union — speaking for 18 press operators and platemakers (formerly with the Graphic Communications International Union) and about a dozen compositors — to bargain common elements in their contracts. First, however, what's negotiated are each union's "particulars," with VVING first out of the starting blocks this time around.