Byko Sends New Memo; Negotiations To Start In 5

Okay, back to strike talk! Or, rather, lack of strike talk.

In today’s Inquirer, Joseph DiStefano writes about Brian Tierney’s “surpris to the Guild’s reaction to the pension plan shift. (Management wants to freeze the pension fund and switch to a 401(k). The Guild is opposed to it.)

There’s a new memo after the jump in response to that, but the real fun is over at Steve Volk’s The Daily Strike, which will still be covering the negotiations, set to begin today at 10 a.m. Head over there for coverage and the like.

GUILD TO RETURN TO TALKS WITH SURPRISED PUBLISHER

Guild negotiators will report for joint talks scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday.

The company is now expressing surprise (Inquirer 12/11/06) at Guild resistance to the company’s demands to freeze the pension and take it over.

“They shouldn’t be,” Guild Local President Henry Holcomb. “If they were surprised, it’s because they didn’t calibrate the cost to our members of what they proposed. We asked them to do that from the beginning, but they weren’t listening.”

Guild negotiators met over the weekend and crafted responses to the company’s positions on pensions. The company proposes to both freeze contributions into the fund and to take over sole management and direction of the fund.

The fund board currently has three union representatives, three company representatives, and an impartial chair.

There is almost $187 million in the safe and healthy fund, almost all of which was placed there by the newspapers’ former owner, Knight-Ridder, in trust for Guild members.

In some cases, contributions to the fund were made possible by members taking less as wage increases and diverting some of that money to the pension fund to insure their future financial security.