The negotiations Tom Thibeault calls the hardest of his life were over everything and almost nothing. At stake was the continued existence of the Sun-Times, Pioneer Press, and the dozens of other titles that constitute the Sun-Times Media Group—not to mention the Chicago Newspaper Guild, of which Thibeault is executive director. Were the guild to agree to all the concessions financier Jim Tyree was demanding before he’d take over the bankrupt company, it would turn itself into a nullity.
On October 7 the guild offered its members a revised memorandum. The paragraph on work rules and jurisdiction now included language worked out by negotiators that morning between midnight and three. “Except as expressly set forth in this agreement, nothing in this paragraph is intended to eliminate provisions in [the guild contract] relating to sick leave, overtime pay, holidays, vacation, leaves of absence, dues deductions, grievance and arbitration, or any other similar provisions that are wholly unrelated to the matters set forth in this agreement.”
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“My recommendation was clear,” says Thibeault. “Hold your nose and vote for it. It’s a crappy agreement but it’s the best we can get and there’ll be another day left to fight.”
But as Stiefel says, “Nothing’s any good unless it’s in writing.” Thibeault called Tyree a couple times and suggested that if he wanted the guild’s OK there were things that needed to be discussed. “He was trying to say, ‘Don’t worry about those things—that’s not my intention,’ stuff like that. His lawyers and advisers wanted [the memorandum] to be as loose as possible and we wanted it as tight as possible. We wanted assurances.”
The problem was that they couldn’t make it better all by themselves. “It was hard to get them to talk to us,” says Stiefel. “We kept saying, ‘You’ve got to talk to us. You’ve got to talk to us.’ Tom was talking to somebody every day. We kept up communications. He was in touch with a lot of people.” Interim CEO Jeremy Halbreich, labor relations vice president Ted Rilea, even Tyree.
The next important date was October 8, the bankruptcy auction. If Tyree had the unions on his side he’d almost certainly take over the company, and if he didn’t he wouldn’t. “We knew October 8 was important to the company, and we needed serious bargaining, and we started moving a lot faster.”
Yet it had taken three weeks for men and women of good will to agree on language that in the view of the new owner of the Sun-Times Media Group merely clarified intentions he already had and in the view of the guild merely transformed an intolerable imposition into a loathsome burden. Someone untutored in the ways of lawyers and labor contracts might wonder why this took more than 30 minutes.
