No Deal   

T HE INDIANAPOLIS STAR ISN'T the only paper where employees have been working without a new contract. While the Star's deal expired about six months ago, at least two other Guilds have been working on new contracts for much longer.
At eight years, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle is in one of its longer stretches without a contract under Gannett (union president Steve Orr says the longest he knows of was 12 years).
Orr says the company has been willing to negotiate new language for the existing contract to deal with changes in the workplace and has been awarding raises. But contract negotiations happen infrequently, and he calls Gannett "unbending." One of the company's most rigid stances, he says, is its refusal to allow union employees access to the company's 401K plan. Gannett declined to comment on the talks.
Contract negotiations are also bogged down at Maine's Portland Press Herald, which was bought by the Blethen family in November 1998. The contract expired that same month, and the union agreed to begin off-the-record, collaborative bargaining. That ended last summer, after the company made a proposal that would have provided raises averaging 1.8 percent annually over five years, capped sick days at five a year, increased employees' share of health insurance from 10 to 20 percent, and allowed the company to change job descriptions without getting the union's OK, says Guild Vice President Ed Murphy. The union voted unanimously in late July to begin traditional bargaining. Weekly afternoon picketing started in September and ended in November, with about 120 to 130 of the 300 members coming out on any given day, Murphy says.
Recently, a tentative agreement was reached on which online jobs will be included in the bargaining unit and on how to determine the status of new positions. But optimism that a contract agreement might not be far behind was dashed when the company offered an 80-page, 30-article proposal that, among other changes, "essentially would wipe out past practices" as a way of determining policies on vacation, sick leave and other matters, Murphy says. The current contract is 55 pages with 22 articles. Meanwhile, "we had our last raise three-and-a-half years ago," he says in frustration.
Frank Blethen calls the existing Press Herald contract "so bad...it actually scared off a number of larger chains" from buying the paper because it is so generous to employees. For instance, it provides for an under-40 hour workweek. If one of those chains had bought the paper, he says, "they would have already slashed and burned the newsroom and the newspaper."