As expected, the Providence Newspaper Guild last week ratified a new three-year contract. According to the Guild's Web site, the vote last Wednesday was 228-to-17, with more than 70 percent of members taking part.
In remarkable contrast to the acrimony that preceded their current pact, the Providence Journal and the Providence Newspaper Guild reached agreement yesterday on a new three-year contract, intended to run from January 1 through the end of 2010. The deal includes a three percent raise in the first year; two percent or whatever is received by the Teamsters or the Pressmans' Union, whichever is higher, in the second year; and the same raise as the other unions in the final year.
Members of the Guild, which represents more than 400 reporters, photographers, and other workers at the ProJo, are scheduled to vote on the contract January 9. The union's bargaining committee has unanimously recommended voting in favor of it.
The Guild's last contract agreement, in 2003, came after four years of a divisive union-management battle that left many employees with a bitter taste following the Belo Corporation's 1997 acquisition of the ProJo. The pain of the last battle, as I reported earlier this month, left both sides in a decidely more collaborative state of mind.
"It's a pleasant change," Guild administrator Tim Schick says. "To be in a situation where you can have constructive dialogue and work at problem-solving, not just in terms of this round of bargaining, but in what's been going on in the last couple of years [is] a lot more preferable than duking it out and litigating everything. It's the way labor relations should be practiced. It doesn't mean we resolved all our problems .... but we currently have a better situation than most newspapers do."
Schick calls the agreement "a reasonable deal given the state of the economy and what's been going on in the newspaper industry right now." Initial feedback "is that most people are satisfied with it. There are aspects that some people don't like, but ultimately we'll know where the members stand on January 9."