Times will begin replacing strikers
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, December 19, 2000
By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
SEATTLE — The Seattle Times says it will begin hiring permanent replacements for striking workers today, a decision the workers called cynical and possibly illegal.
Times President H. Mason Sizemore made the announcement at a news conference Tuesday. He said a monthlong strike by Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer workers has cost millions of dollars in advertising and circulation revenue, and The Times has no choice but to resume its normal business with new permanent workers.
Some temporary workers in advertising and circulation will be made permanent today, and the company will soon begin recruiting permanent replacements for newsroom employees, Sizemore said. Between layoffs and being replaced, more than 10 percent of striking advertising and circulation workers will lose their jobs, he said.
"This is an incredibly cynical ploy to try to break this strike," said Linda Foley, president of the International Newspaper Guild. "They have to make these threats six days before Christmas?"
Foley said that late Tuesday afternoon she received word from the National Labor Relations Board that it found some merit in an unfair labor relations claim against The Times.
The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, which represents 1,000 workers at the newspapers, filed the claim Nov. 27, accusing The Times of calling workers at home and threatening them in an attempt to persuade them to return to work. The strike began Nov. 21.
Times spokeswoman Kerry Coughlin said the newspaper has heard nothing about such a finding of merit and that the allegations are unfounded. No NLRB spokesman was immediately reachable for comment after business hours Tuesday.
Union spokesman Art Thiel, a striking P-I sports columnist, said the next step would be for the NLRB to try to settle the issue with the company. If no settlement could be reached, the board would file a complaint, and a trial would follow, he said.
It is illegal for a company to hire permanent replacement workers if it has used unfair labor practices to prolong a strike.
The Times and P-I are published under a joint operating agreement that dates from 1983. The Times handles circulation and advertising for both papers, and they negotiate together.
A P-I spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment Tuesday evening.
The most recent offers to the strikers came Monday and included hourly raises of $3.30 over six years. Guild leaders said their membership will not vote until they see two things: language in the contract about how striking workers will get their jobs back and a complete contract proposal for 80 striking composing room employees. Like the Guild members, those employees are also part of the Communications Workers of America but belong to a separate bargaining unit.
The Guild says it has maintained all along that it needed to see those items, but Sizemore characterized them as new demands that have made the chances of quickly solving the strike bleak.
The composing room workers have barely begun negotiations with The Times, Sizemore said, and a final contract offer probably cannot be prepared quickly.
However, The Times planned to present the union with return-to-work language by Thursday, he said.
He said about 75 percent of the Guild’s members at the Times are on strike.
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