Talks Today Seek to Avert Strike at Union, Tribune

Negotiators for the San Diego Newspaper Guild and management of the San Diego Union and Tribune are scheduled to meet again this morning in an eleventh-hour attempt to avoid the city’s first newspaper strike, which is scheduled to start a minute after midnight tonight.

Management rejected a proposal submitted Thursday by the guild. The two sides met for less than four hours, agreeing only to meet again at 9 a.m. today at the site of bargaining, the Hyatt Islandia.

A spokesman for the newspapers declined to say whether the Union-Tribune Publishing Co. would provide a new proposal. Leaders of the guild, which represents about 1,150 reporters, photographers and advertising, circulation and other employees, said they hoped an agreement was still possible and that a strike could be avoided.

Meanwhile, both sides continued to make strike preparations.

Herb Klein, editor-in-chief of Copley Newspapers, the chain that publishes the morning Union and afternoon Tribune as well as 13 other smaller dailies, said, “We’re fully prepared to continue publishing. We expect to have (the papers) out on time.”

Klein said company advertisements seeking replacement workers have attracted an estimated 600 job applicants, who are now being screened. In the event of a strike, Klein said, the newspapers would be published by management personnel, who have practiced putting out mock papers, and by workers “who choose not to strike.”

Leaders at the guild said they are equally prepared to walk out and predicted a drastic reduction in the quality of the papers if management is able to publish and deliver them.

Ed Jahn, president of the local guild, said his union doesn’t relish a strike, but that, after 55 negotiating sessions without agreement on a new contract, it has been forced to take a stand.

Guild members have worked without a contract since June, 1988, and have not had a pay increase in two years. Top-scale reporters and advertising salespeople earn $750 a week. The company is also negotiating contracts with the San Diego Typographical Union No. 221 and the San Diego Mailers Union No. 75. The typographers have worked without a contract since August, 1987, and the mailers since August, 1986. Mailers haven’t had a pay increase since February, 1986.

In the latest effort to resolve the guild’s contract dispute, guild negotiators Thursday proposed a three-year package. Its key points included a 9% pay raise the first year, followed by a 4 1/2% increase each of the next two years. Instead of retroactive pay, the guild proposed that the company pay each guild member a $1,200 “signing bonus,” roughly the cumulative equivalent of increased health insurance benefits the company passed on to employees earlier this year.

In return, the guild offered to drop outstanding unfair labor practice charges pending against the Union-Tribune on the condition the company pay back wages to a former guild negotiator who was fired and whose case is among the pending charges. The newspaper faces about 2 dozen allegations of federal labor law violations filed by the National Labor Relations Board.

The last management proposal, submitted Wednesday, offered a one-year contract with a 5% raise for circulation, distribution and advertising workers, and an 8% wage increase for reporters, photographers and other workers.

Klein characterized the guild’s package submitted Thursday as an “all or nothing” proposal and criticized it for including a provision to pay wages to the fired guild negotiator, Nancy Tetrault.

Although pay and grievance procedures are important issues, both sides say that, at the core of the disagreement, is whether the newspapers will have a guild shop.

Guild leaders have accused the company of attempting to abolish the union, and point to Copley’s hiring of the Nashville-based law firm of King & Ballow, which has a reputation in labor circles for being stridently anti-union.

“The issue goes to fairness and democracy,” said Jim Griffin, the guild’s chief negotiator. “The company wants less people to participate in the union’s affairs, less people to be registered to vote in our meetings. They want less people to be involved in running this union, and the workers are saying, ‘enough.’

“We want a democratic union,” Griffin said. “That’s what this stand is all about.”

Klein said he, too, is for a democratic union, but said the company wants an open shop, in which employees have a choice on whether to join the union.

A strike would be the first to hit the Union and Tribune in the 51 years the Newspaper Guild has represented workers there. The morning Union has a daily circulation of 261,853 and 411,000 on Sunday. The Tribune, which does not publish on Sunday, has a circulation of 121,157.

William H. McLeman, director of field operations for the international Newspaper Guild, was in San Diego on Thursday and said a strike against the Union-Tribune would be the first involving major newspapers in the West in more than a decade.