Steadfast Guild members ratify
'pretty
good contract'
after Osprey newspaper does U-turn
on concession demands
Northern Ontario Newspaper Guild | TNG
Canada Local 30232
Tenacity has paid off in Sudbury
where Guild members today are celebrating the power
of union solidarity in warding off concessions and
improving collective agreements.
The 54 members of the Northern Ontario Newspaper Guild
convinced Osprey Media, owner of the Sudbury
Star,
to abandon concession bargaining and negotiate a contract
that addresses the membership's priorities and contains
improvements in many areas.
The membership last night voted 90
per cent in favour of ratifying the five-year deal
that delivers to the 14 part-time employees in the
mailroom an average annual increase of four per cent
and the 40 full-time employees in all other departments
of the daily newspaper an 11-per-cent increase over
the life of the agreement. The wage increases are retroactive
to May 1, 2006, when the previous contract expired.
There were also big gains on key issues such as severance,
pensions and mileage allowance.
"The membership," says president Denis St.
Pierre, "is very satisfied and proud about how
they were able to turn things around."
Osprey Media, well known for its autocratic approach
to negotiations and 'take-it-or-leave-it' offers, had
barely budged from its initial proposals when bargaining
began last year and continued through conciliation
and mediation in the fall. The membership had in November
rejected a company offer that contained major concession
demands and did not address key issues such as job
security, severance, pensions, wages and vehicle allowances.
After making one change to
the proposed settlement — withdrawal
of language that would have allowed Osprey a free hand
in contracting out jobs to its non-union call centres — the
company presented it as a final offer. When Guild members
declined to vote on the proposed settlement at the
end of January, and took a strike vote instead, with
73 per cent in favour of such job action, Osprey took
the unusual step of requesting the Ministry of Labour
conduct a supervised vote on its final offer.
The turning point for the Guild,
says St. Pierre, came on Thursday, March 1, the day
before the supervised vote was to be held. Star publisher
David Kilgour held "captive
audience" meetings with staff in each department,
and Guild members, who were "really upset," made
it clear that they would vote overwhelmingly against
the company's offer the next day.
But Osprey Media was spared the embarrassment of such
a decisive rejection. The March 2 vote was cancelled
because a major winter storm prevented the Ontario
Labour Relations Board officer from getting to Sudbury.
That was when Kilgour seized the opportunity to engage
the union to resume negotiations, but in an uncoventional
manner.
St. Pierre, in consultation with the bargaining team
and with the knowledge of the membership, agreed to
meet one-on-one with the publisher. Over the course
of the next 10 days, they held several meetings; some
lasting as little as five minutes, others as long as
an hour.
"In the end, there were no concessions and we
wound up with a pretty good contract," says St.
Pierre, adding that the credit must go to the members,
who stood together and refused to cave to Osprey's
unreasonable demands. He says "it was quite heartening" for
him to know the members fully backed their bargaining
team which, from the outset, "was committed to
getting a deal without courting a labour dispute."
St. Pierre adds that Guild members "are
encouraged by the leadership role the
publisher took in recognizing an agreement could be
reached while addressing the union's and the company's
objectives.
"The meetings with the publisher
were positive and cordial and, in the end, productive
for both sides. Hopefully, we have the makings of a
new labour-management relationship at the Star that
will help us move the newspaper forward, to the benefit
of all involved."
St. Pierre notes that there have been six lockouts
or strikes at the Sudbury Star since the mid-1970s,
the most recent being a four-month lockout by Osprey
in 2002-03, which proved quite disastrous.
While it appears that the mailroom workers, with a
20-per-cent wage increase over five years, were the
big winners in this settlement, they will still be
short of the typical pay rates at other newspapers,
says St. Pierre.
"This is their third contract. When they were
first organized in 1999, their wages were 10 cents
above the minimum wage — about $7 an hour. At
the end of this deal, their rate will be up to $12.80," he
says.
Members of the other bargaining unit sacrificed a
larger wage increase for a greater contribution by
the employer to the group RSP plan. It will increase
from five dollars a shift to nine.
The employer also agreed to more than double the severance
package for full-time employees. The previous contract
contained the legislated standard of one week's pay
for each year of service up to 26 weeks. The new clause
stipulates two weeks' pay and a maximum of 36 weeks;
for long-term employees, the maximum is 41 weeks.
Another key issue for the membership was mileage,
which will now increase from 32 to 43 cents a kilometre.
Also, a scale was introduced that will bump up mileage
if gasoline prices increase substantially.
That bargaining unit also won minor improvements in
the benefits package and vacation entitlement.
There were minor improvements in severance packages
for the part-time mailroom workers, as well as in vacation
entitlements. Plus, the company has agreed to pay 100
per cent of the cost for safety shoes.
The employer backed off entirely
from several concessions it sought, the major one
involving sick leave, says St. Pierre. Management
wanted a company-selected doctor to determine an
employee's state of health in the event of a dispute.
The existing language, which calls for a third doctor — mutually selected by the company
and the union — to give an opinion in the event
the employee's doctor and the company's doctor disagrees,
remains intact.