St. Louis Newspaper Guild sets contract vote
The St. Louis Newspaper Guild has scheduled a March 27 vote on the terms of a proposed 5 1/2-year contract with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The newspaper confirmed Wednesday that it has made its final offer to the guild, which represents P-D employees in the newsroom, advertising and building service.
The offer asks guild members to accept an immediate 6 percent wage cut along with an unpaid, one-week furlough in each of the next three years. Wages would increase by 2.5 percent in each of the final three years of the contract, if minimum revenue thresholds are reached.
Last week, Post-Dispatch supervisors learned that 2010 will bring another one-week furlough, the third time they have been asked to take unpaid leave in less than two years. The guild accepted a one-week unpaid furlough last year as well.
As part of the current contract proposal, the Post-Dispatch agreed to a six-month moratorium on layoffs so long as the pending guild contract is ratified by April 1 cheapest personal loan rates. The pact also would freeze pensions and eliminate medical benefits for Post-Dispatch retirees.
The contract negotiations, which began in 2009, dovetailed with declining industry revenue, as newspapers and magazines grappled with the recession and a slow economic recovery.
Last summer, the guild representing employees of the Boston Globe agreed to $10 million in concessions in a contract that curtailed salary, benefits and vacation time.
And earlier this month, workers at the Akron Beacon-Journal avoided a threatened strike by ratifying a contract that reduced their wages by a total of 10 percent, while cutting the workweek from 40 to 37.5 hours.