IRVING DAILIES DILEMMA
You can have work and rights, just not all at once

The Irving media empire in New Brunswick has hit a shameful new low in labour relations, forcing some employees at the Telegraph-Journal in Saint John to choose between a paycheque and their right to union representation.

David Esposti, the CWA Canada staffer who assisted the Saint John Typographical Union in negotiations to renew the collective agreements for 50 members in the advertising and editorial departments, says the employer made it clear that certain jobs would be eliminated and the work performed at a non-union production centre.

In order to save the jobs of nine ad builders, the union agreed to relinquish its right to represent those workers, says Esposti.

"I was absolutely convinced those jobs were going to move," he says, noting that other media conglomerates such as CanWest (now Postmedia) and Quebecor, where CWA Canada has members, had blazed the union-busting trail before Irving.

"This was not some idle threat," says Esposti. "Do I get up on my high horse to defend union principles and let these people lose their jobs? No. We had to do what was right for them."

Bruce Bartlett, a veteran reporter and acting president of the Local, says members are "kind of shell shocked," but they ratified the new five-year contract which provides for raises of 1.5 per cent in the first year and two per cent in each of the following four years.

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"We've been going through a lot of changes because of this (shift to) online production as of the first of September," he says. Not only will the newsroom lose four copy editors and four page builders, but staff will have to contend with multiple deadlines throughout the day.

Two other Irving dailies, The Daily Gleaner in Fredericton and the Times & Transcript in Moncton, will also lose jobs to the production centre in Saint John. Overall, says Bartlett, the company plans to have the work of 67 people performed by 40.

"The ad builders are not very happy (about losing union representation), but they're pleased with the Memorandum of Agreement that preserves their pay and benefits," says Bartlett.

The union did manage to negotiate decent severance packages for those employees who choose to not move to the new facility.

The company, which has a stranglehold on print media in the province, is also about to slash the commission income of its advertising sales reps by limiting them to specific geographic areas. The union estimates their pay that ranges from $60,000 to $70,000 will be cut almost in half.