Go back to front pageThe security thugs whom the employers imported from Detroit, coupled with the chain-link fences topped with barbed wire that they had erected at printing plants and at the Fifth and Mission offices, were vivid symbols of the poisonous atmosphere that management created over the past year.
As members of the Conference of Newspaper Unions worked without a contract and tried to bargain in good faith, the companies brought in a team of hired-gun lawyers from Tennessee that implemented mean-spirited, destructive policies against our members. That behavior helped precipitate the strike on Nov.1.
It is instructive that in the days leading up to the strike, and since it began, top-level managers have ducked nearly all requests for interviews, or even cursory official comment, from other media organizations - a strange stance for companies in the news business. Apparently they're ashamed to show their faces in public.
We have no such hesitation, however, and invite readers and members of the public to examine the key issues in the strike.
Wages: After enduring a 19-month wage freeze and struggling for four years to support families with token wage increases that were half the rate of inflation, union members were offered a raise of 30 cents an hour -- $12 a week -- just about enough to buy coffee and a newspaper every day. While the conference proposed a series of moderate pay raises over a five-year period, management's final offer amounted to just 2.46 percent each year over four years.
Jobs: The employers took dead aim at several crafts unions in the conference, most notably the Teamsters. Seeking to impose sweeping changes in work rules, management demanded power to alter distribution methods that could mean elimination of 150 jobs or reduction of them to part-time, low-benefit positions. Also affected would be hundreds of jobs for Bay Area youths who help drivers distribute the papers.
Equity: The employers would not deal seriously with the issue of pay equity. For example, they refused to address significant wage disparities between trained, professional librarians -- most of whom are women -- and editorial staff.
We did not want this strike, but the contempt and disdain with which the employers treated our members left us no choice.
As long as the strike lasts, the columnists, reporters, editors, artists, photographers, typographers, administrative and crafts union employees whose collective labor defined and shaped the Chronicle, Examiner and Newspaper Agency will be contributing our best efforts to The Free Press, an independent journalistic voice that we aim to make a paper of the highest quality and standards.
We hope you enjoy reading it, and we respectfully ask for your support in our fight for dignity and fairness.
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