US newspaper owners ratchet up pressure on organized labor

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.boston.com/ae/media/articles/2009/04/09/us_newspaper_owners_ratchet_up_pressure_on_organized_labor/

By Robert Gavin
Globe Staff / April 9, 2009

Newspaper owners across the country are using dire warnings and, in some cases, blunt threats about economic survival to press unions to make concessions on wages, benefits, and work rules. And it's working.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, the California Media Workers Guild, which represents editorial and commercial workers, gave up pay raises, a week of vacation, and seniority rules for layoffs about month after owner Hearst Corp. of New York threatened to sell or close the paper if it could not cut costs.

Members of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild in Seattle will vote today on accepting a wage freeze and two weeks of unpaid furloughs just several weeks after management of the privately held Seattle Times laid out a dire financial situation. In Portland, Maine, union leaders have agreed to wage cuts in exchange for a 15 percent employee stake in the Portland Press Herald after the likely buyer said concessions were necessary to save the paper.

The paper's current owner, the Blethen family, which also controls the Seattle Times, said in a court filing last year that it might have to shut the paper if it could not sell it.

"If you're a union person, you have to take these threats seriously," said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla. "The businesses right now have close to zero value as operating concerns."

FULL story at link.