AS THE PROJO TURNS Contract talks prove elusive BY IAN DONNIS

When the Providence Journal and the Providence Newspaper Guild reached an early October agreement on resuming the collection of Guild dues through payroll deduction, the union hailed it as a significant breakthrough in the contentious, almost four-year-old contract dispute between the two sides. "This could be interpreted as the end of the company’s campaign to try to strangle the Guild financially," Tim Schick, the union’s administrator, told me at the time. A month has passed, though, and the Guild — on the eve of hosting a protest with several hundred visiting members of the Communications Workers of America — finds itself in the familiar position of trying to pressure management to return to the bargaining table.

The ProJo has declined to negotiate since its largest union, in the first plebiscite on a new contract in three years, voted in June to reject the company’s offer. Thomas J. McDonough, the newspaper’s human resources director, wrote in a letter at the time that management’s "entire offer for a new contract . . . was final, including but not limited to" three sticking points highlighted by the Guild.

Maintaining a more conciliatory tone from recent interviews, Schick said earlier this week, "In terms of the contract itself, there’s been no progress. But in terms of things like day-to-day relations, the company is making an effort to resolve grievances and employee concerns at a very early level, rather than stonewalling us, which is what they were doing three to four years ago. It would signal that at least on a day-to-day basis, some people in the Journal are looking for a better relationship with the Guild."

McDonough and Journal publisher Howard G. Sutton, continuing their practice of not speaking with the Phoenix, didn’t return recent calls seeking comment.

The Guild has used different tactics to try to cajole management back to the table, discussing a circulation boycott, successfully filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, holding regular pickets outside the ProJo’s Fountain Street headquarters, and enlisting the support of some of the paper’s major advertisers. In the latest effort, several hundred members of the Communications Workers of America — in town for a regional meeting at the nearby The Westin Providence — will join the Guild for a lunch time rally outside the Journal on Thursday, November 6. The unionists will then march to the Biltmore to offer their support for hotel workers who are also without a contract.

The Journal’s agreement to resume the collection of union dues came, Schick says, after US District Court Judge Mary Lisi ruled in the Guild’s favor on a related decision. "We made them an offer which we think satisfied the needs of both sides, so it reduced their incentive to continue litigating," he says. In particular, the company was cleared of its arbitrator-imposed responsibility to pay the union for back dues owed by members who didn’t contribute between February 2000 and August 2002.

Any hopes on the Guild’s part that this signaled a new period of consistent good vibes in union-management relations proved short-lived. About a week later, the scribes were again shaking their heads when the ProJo unveiled a new "policy on public appearances" that restricts, says the union, "out-of-work activities in ways that go beyond what the Guild contract requires." Employees are required to obtain the publisher’s approval, for example, before taking part in outside activities "which might be deemed to conflict with his or her journalistic obligations, which might raise ethical challenges, or which might become subject to journalistic scrutiny." The union didn’t hesitate to note that the latter category could encompass such things as a Guild rally.