When last we looked in on the tumultuous marriage of Sun-Times Media and the Chicago Newspaper Guild, the union—in either sense of the word—was hanging by a thread. It was October of 2009, and an investment group led by financier James Tyree had just snatched the bankrupt company from the jaws of death. The guild did its bit by agreeing to draconian terms that let Tyree abolish any work rule he thought stood in the way of survival.
Three years later, that day has come. The “memorandum of understanding” the guild and Sun-Times Media signed in 2009 expired in October, though most of its wildly one-sided terms remain in force until new ones are negotiated. And since last August the two parties have been meeting to decide what those new terms shall be.
In short, “The Company thus told us that it does not care enough about us to restore our pay to 2009 levels. It told us that it has no intention of returning money we gave up in order to save it. . . . Three years later, with new owners who say they are pouring money into making Wrapports/Sun Times Media a success, the Company has told us that we are not worth any of that money.”
The immediate impact of Kirk’s announcement was to shift, from the realm of hypothesis to the realm of harsh reality, the company’s power to make guild members stationed in places like Gary, Indiana (Sun-Times Media’s Post-Tribune), Joliet (its Herald-News), and Glenview (Pioneer Press headquarters) relocate downtown. It underlined the obsolescence of old jurisdictional boundaries and solidified management’s view that to work for one paper is to work for them all. And it reinforced the case the guild makes for a single contract covering every guild employee in the company. In the past there was one contract for the Sun-Times, another for Pioneer Press, yet others for the Post-Tribune, Herald-News, and other guild papers.
The guild’s view of it is that if the company wants to grow and profit, new content and new technology can only take it so far unless old professionalism is back in the mix. At Pioneer Press, Pollard laments (as Stiefel did before him), too many staff reporters who knew their beats have been replaced by an ever-changing assortment of stringers who don’t.
