Contract Deadline Nears at Philly Papers

Posted 30 November 2006 @ 08:54 am EET     Print     Reprint     E-Mail     Comments

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - With their contract expiring at midnight Thursday, editorial employees of Philadelphia's two largest newspapers braced for a possible strike that analysts said both management and the unions would do well to avoid.

If workers walk off the job at The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, it would be their first strike since a 46-day walkout in 1985.

Leaders of the largest union, the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, said they are most upset about company proposals to freeze and take over the pension plan, disregard seniority when it comes to layoffs and cut sick pay.

On Thursday morning, the papers' nine other unions were scheduled to meet to decide on a course of action in the event of a strike, said Joe Lyons, president of the Philadelphia Council of Newspaper Unions. He also said his unions would consider extending contract talks.

Philadelphia Media Holdings an investment group led by Brian Tierney, a former public relations executive who is now the papers' chief executive bought the dailies from McClatchy Co. in June in a deal valued at $562 million.

After the purchase, Tierney spoke optimistically of the papers' futures. But since then, the news at the papers has only been bad.

Weekday circulation at the Inquirer fell 7.6 percent to nearly 331,000 in the six months ended Sept. 30, compared with a national decline in daily circulation of 2.8 percent. And last month Tierney announced that declining ad revenues would require contract concessions and other cost-cutting and that layoffs were unavoidable. The top editor has also since been replaced.

Analysts said a strike would hurt both the company, which would suffer declines in advertising revenue and circulation, and employees, who risk losing their jobs or having to accept lower wages.

"They are debilitating for everybody," said Steve Cabot, chairman of The Cabot Institute for Labor Relations, a suburban Philadelphia consulting firm that advises management.

Employees have not fared well in recent strikes at other major newspapers. In this case, the unions are dealing with inexperienced owners, analysts also note.

The longest and arguably the most bitter newspaper strike, lasting 19 months, occurred at the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News. When it ended in 1997, circulation and wages fell. The strike cost the papers $300 million, mostly due to hiring of replacement workers and lost ad revenue.

But in the end, management got the upper hand, said John Morton, a leading newspaper analyst.

"The unions struck and basically overnight the owners were able to achieve staff reductions that would have taken them years to negotiate," he said.

The Detroit publishers planned well for a strike. Morton said he is not so sure about Philadelphia Media.

"Management is not as well-equipped to pull it off," he said. "These guys haven't run newspapers before, so who knows how that might turn out?"

The Guild represents more than 900 editorial and other workers at the two papers. Union leaders had previously said they would consider extending talks a few days if progress were being made — but not for a month, as they did at the end of October.

By Wednesday, eight of the Philadelphia papers' 10 unions had reached agreements with management on non-economic issues such as staffing levels, but they still need to work out the financial details before an agreement could be finalized. There are no such deals with the Guild or workers who assemble the paper, the company said.

Guild spokesman Stu Bykofsky said about 600 workers had signed up for picketing shifts and that 700 employees turned in strike eligibility forms to ensure they would qualify for benefits during a walkout.

The remaining employees would field other work, including contributing to an online news site, which would compete with the company-owned Web site.

If the Guild does go on strike, the support of the other unions is critical, notably that of drivers who could stop on newspaper distribution even if management manages to publish.

"So much of what produces a newspaper has become automated," Morton said. "The things that would interfere with that is distributorship."