Providence Newspaper Guild - Guild Leader October 9, 2001

In Our Own Words

'YES' FOR A BOYCOTT
The Leader wants members' views on the Oct 23-24 boycott vote. E-mail them to png@riguild.org, or give them to an executive board member.

GUILD NOTES

BUYOUT
A subcommittee of the executive board will meet Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 4 p.m. with the company to discuss details of the buyout offer the company says it is extending the Guild on the same basis to other workers. The Guild Leader will print the latest information as it becomes available. The Guild estimates there are 79 members of the bargaining unit 55-years or older and thus eligible for the buyout.

RALLY
The Guild will hold a rally Saturday, Oct. 20, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in front of The Journal Building to support our drive for a contract and to protest the company's illegal stalling tactics that have resulted in 47 unfair labor practices charges by the federal government.

By Brian C. Jones

Here's why I believe that the Guild should approve a consumer boycott:

But while a strike remains an option for us, there are aspects of a strike that makes a walkout seem more like management's weapon than a union's.

In strikes such as those in Detroit and Seattle, newspapers keep on publishing by hiring scabs, more politely known as replacement workers.

That means a new problem for a union in ending a strike: getting rid of scabs that have taken members' jobs.

A boycott is an attempt to deal with that. We try to keep our jobs, while still putting pressure on the company.

It should. The newspaper hardly can stand to lose a single reader in these days of declining circulation and ad revenues. A boycott will cost the paper a big fraction of its current readers, including the thousands who already have signed pledge cards promising to support the Guild if we do call a boycott.

But for two years of refusing to conclude a fair contract, managers of the paper seem to be saying to the Guild: Okay, what are your going to do about it?

Negotiations should proceed on the facts and on fairness, not on which side has more power.

But I believe that for the past two years the company has been out to break the Guild. I don't know why, because the Guild has been, for most of its history, a mild-mannered, hard-working union that has helped make The Journal a Pulitzer-class newspaper that brings in profits that would make most business executives swoon.

We've tried every conceivable step to bring an end to negotiations, starting with a modest agenda of proposals.

We've worked to rule, we've rallied, leafleted, addressed Belo Corp. stockholders. We've tried federal mediation. We've had off-the-record contacts. We've dropped or modified some of our proposals. We've called for a public debate overseen by a respected Brown professor. We've asked members of the Congressional delegation to speak to managers on our behalf.