Day 2 - Final edition

Talks fail; trial resumes
Schick's testimony details 2½ years of Guild offers, company rejections

Because no bargaining progress was made, the Journal's trial on 46 charges that it violated federal labor law resumed at 1 p.m. Guild Administrator Tim Schick continued testifying about the bargaining that took place between October 1999 and last week.

He detailed how the company imposed selected terms of its original contract proposal at different times, even as negotiations continued. Schick also described the various contract offers that the Guild made after its members rejected the company's "last, best and final offer." The company, he testified, rejected each of those offers.

Near the end of yesterday's four-hour proceeding, Journal lawyer Richard A. Perras sought to block the introduction of last week's correspondence between the Journal and the Guild concerning a contract offer by the company, even though, in his opening arguments, Perras had cited that offer as evidence of the company's willingness to bargain.

Perras told Administrative Law Judge William G. Kocol that the offer was an attempt to settle the charges that led to this week's trial, and that making public such details would have ``a chilling effect on those kinds of settlement discussions.'' Elizabeth Vorro, lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that brought the charges against the Journal, pointed out that the Journal had posted its letters to the Guild on the company intranet, accessible to anyone who works at the Journal. Kocol overruled Perras's objections.

The three letters document a one-page contract offer from the Journal, the Guild's response asking to delay the trial to negotiate over the offer, and the company's refusal to talk because the Guild had not simply accepted the contract offer without further explanation.

Earlier in the day, Perras prevailed in another attempt to block the introduction of documents, when the judge agreed with him that letters concerning the Guild's request for a public forum on the dispute were irrelevant to the charges. In what Perras described as a "P.R. opportunity," the Guild had invited the Journal to air their differences with a neutral moderator in a public forum. The Journal declined.

Schick's testimony yesterday and Monday chronicled years of bargaining in which the Guild repeatedly adjusted its contract proposal while the company made little movement.

Under questioning by Vorro, he described arriving at the Human Resources office for a negotiating session on health benefits in December 1999. Outside the conference room, he saw workers stuffing envelopes -- addressed to Guild members -- with the details of the health plans that the company intended to implement without Guild consent. That day, the company declared impasse on health and dental benefits and imposed the plans that it had originally proposed.

Later, Schick testified, the company unilaterally took away a holiday, extended the eligibility for vacations, eliminated parking provisions in the contract, and eliminated a "status quo" clause that extends an expired contract's provisions. It also replaced the old gain-sharing program with a different bonus plan. This was a change that the Guild had already agreed to. Other provisions on which the two sides had reached tentative agreements were not implemented, however, Schick testified.

Perras, in his opening arguments Monday, had accused the Guild of "holding up this entire contract" with a demand for a Blue Cross plan. But Schick testified that the Guild's initial offer did not even include Blue Cross. Later, the union modified its proposal to include three Blue Cross plans, one of them an indemnity plan, that the Guild had obtained from Blue Cross. The company repeatedly asserted that Blue Cross was not willing to insure Journal employees, but the Guild provided the company with a letter from Blue Cross explaining the coverage it was willing to provide. Later, in the Nov. 14, 2001 negotiating session, "Through the mediator, we indicated that Blue Cross would not stand in the way of an agreement,'' Schick testified yesterday.

Schick described a company offer to improve wages if the Guild would drop all pending grievances and unfair-labor-practice charges. Schick said he told the company that the union is obliged to consider each grievance on its merits. "We couldn't just horse-trade them for additional money,'' he said.

He told of a negotiating session in March 2000, when the company took pains to detail the terms of a new retirement plan that it was offering only to nonunion employees. The company, Schick testified, also distributed information to all Guild members about the retirement benefit, even though it was not offering it to Guild members. When the Guild sought more information about this plan so that it could make a proposal to the company, the company refused to answer the questions, Schick said.

Vorro entered into evidence various letters to employees from Publisher Howard Sutton and Vice President Mark Ryan, including one in which Ryan asserts that the Guild had turned down a company offer of the 401K plan that was provided to other employees of the Belo Corp., the Journal's parent company. But in fact, Schick testified, "The Belo 401K had never been offered to the Guild.''

Vorro also presented letters from the company to Guild members in which the company threatened to reduce its wage offer if the Guild continued its preparations for a reader boycott, and a subsequent letter in which the company made good on that threat.

At yesterday morning's bargaining session, the company insisted that talks be off the record, meaning that nothing can be put in writing and no details can be divulged. The Guild assembled its full bargaining team. The company was represented in the talks by its lawyer, Richard A. Perras, and its human resources director, Thomas McDonough.

Speaking through a federal mediator, the Guild made an offer. The company rejected it and made no counterproposals.

The 46 charges against the Journal allege that the company illegally made unilateral changes in benefits and working conditions, refused to provide necessary information or delayed unreasonably in doing so, bargained in bad faith or refused to bargain, and engaged in "regressive bargaining," in which it reduced a wage offer in retaliation for legal union activity.

The trial is scheduled to resume tomorrow at 9 a.m. in Pawtucket City Hall.

Daily reports on the trial will be posted here on www.journalontrial.org. The Web site also has directions and a map to Pawtucket City Hall, 137 Roosevelt Ave. The trial starts at 11 a.m. on Monday and at 9 a.m. on the other days. Here's how to get there:

From Providence and points south: Take Rte. 95 north to School Street exit. Turn left at bottom of ramp onto School Street. Pass Apex on the left and go through one light (one-way right) to next light, bearing left. Go to light at Slater Mill and Visitors Center, making a right onto Roosevelt Avenue. City Hall will be on your right, with parking on left. Trial is on third floor.

From Boston and points north: Take Rte. 95 south into Rhode Island. Take exit 29, Downtown Pawtucket. At end of ramp, merge onto Broadway. Go about two-tenths of a mile and turn right onto Exchange Street. Turn left on Roosevelt Avenue. City Hall will be on your left, with parking on the right. Trial is on the third floor.

Felice J. Freyer is the Providence Journal's award-winning medical writer. She joined the paper in 1982 and was assigned to the medical beat in 1989. A member of the Guild's Executive Committee since 1994, she has taken a leave from the newspaper to cover the trial.

There is much more information about the dispute at the Guild's main website, www.riguild.org. E-mail the Guild at png@riguild.org. The union's mailing address is: The Providence Newspaper Guild, 270 Westminster St., Providence, RI 02903. Telephone: (401) 421-9466. FAX: (401) 421-9495.