Update today...
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003051709
Second Union Locked Out At 'The Blade' -- Is the Guild Next?
By Joe Strupp
Published: August 23, 2006 10:55 AM ET
NEW YORK For the second time in three days, The Blade of Toledo, Ohio has locked out members of one of its eight bargaining units, choosing to keep all nine paper handlers off the job early this morning.
Assistant managing editor LuAnn Sharp told E&P the nine-person unit of the Graphic Communications International Union was locked out at 2 a.m. today. The workers are the second Blade unit of the GCIU to be kept off work this week. On Sunday, another nine workers in the GCIU engraver's unit were locked out.
Both groups are among seven bargaining units currently engaged in contract negotiations, including the 350-member Newspaper Guild. Sharp said the lockouts are the papers way of putting pressure on the unions for new contracts, which have not been in place since the previous agreements ended March 21.
"We really, really want to get this done," she said. "You can't make movement or accomplish anything f you are not meeting. We are serious and want to get back to the table." She added that temporary employees and managers are taking over the paper handlers' and engravers' work during the lock out.
Union leaders, who could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday morning, reacted to the first lockout with a subscriber and advertisers' boycott, which asks readers to stop their subscriptions and urges advertisers to withdraw their support in protest of the lockout.
"We told them we didn't want a strike, we didn't want a boycott, we wanted to talk," Larry Vellequette, a spokesman for the Toledo Council of Newspaper Unions, which oversees several of the paper's unions, said Monday. He could not be reached for comment today.
Sharp said the newspaper entered into mediation twice in the past month with GCIU representatives, but found no progress in either meeting. She said the paper is taking the lockout approach because it is under severe economic pressure to get a new contract with a salary reduction and added health benefit contributions by workers.
"We need to address some big economic issues - wages, health care benefits," said Sharp, referring to GCIU members. "Right now, they make no health benefit contributions."
Sharp even hinted that the guild could face a lockout if it does not come to an agreement in the near future. Although guild representatives are set to meet with management today, Sharp points out that an agreement has yet to materialize.
"There is still the option of a lockout for them," Sharp said about the guild, which represents half of the paper' s unionized workers. "It is something we would consider if we can't get an agreement."
At least one of the paper's bargaining units has reached an ageement, Sharp said. She said the 20-member International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local signed a new deal in July that included a 7% salary cut.
Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.