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07 February 2007
Pressroom workers make slow headway
in contract talks
Halifax Typographical Union |
TNG Canada
Local 30130
Progress is being made in bargaining
a new collective agreement for 14 pressroom workers
in Halifax, but it's proceeding at a snail's pace.
Four more days of conciliation — Feb.
19-20 and March 1-2 — have been scheduled after
three days of talks last week yielded job security
and wage protection for several people hired since
1996. Their names will be added to the list of those
afforded such guarantees under the old contract, which
expired last July.
Darren Pittman, president of the Halifax Typographical
Union, says a few other minor language issues were
resolved, with the major outstanding matters being
wages and early retirement.
It is the latter issue that has brought
repeated threats of a lockout from management negotiator
Don MacDougall.
Pittman says the employees are standing firm on the
early retirement provisions and are quite prepared
to strike, or weather a lockout, if it comes to that.
The workers, who have not had a salary increase in
13 years and who modernized the operation when a new
press was installed several years ago, are insulted
and angry that the employer, family-owned Halifax Herald
Ltd., seems intent on wringing more concessions out
of them.
They produce the Halifax
ChronicleHerald, the
highest circulation daily newspaper in the Atlantic
provinces. It is also the largest independently owned
newspaper company in Canada.
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