At Nine Months, 'Vindy' Strike Is Its Longest

By: Mark Fitzgerald Next week, Newspaper Guild Local 11's strike against The Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio, turns nine months old and will eclipse the 1964 walkout at the family-owned newspaper that lasted more than eight months.

"Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to break the record," Local 11 Vice President Debora Shaulis said by phone Thursday from the offices of the union's Valley Voice strike paper. "We hadn't intended to break the record, but if that's what it takes to achieve what we have to achieve, we're willing to do it."

The strike began Nov. 16, when the last contract expired between the newspaper and the local representing 179 reporters, copy editors, photographers, circulation district managers, and delivery drivers. Management made what it called its best and final offer a few weeks later. The proposal was voted down overwhelmingly by union members, and there's been virtually no progress in bargaining since.

Both sides last met in a formal bargaining session back in March. In May, the two sides held what Shaulis characterized as an informal meeting with a federal mediator.

In their last offers made public, the two sides remained far apart on wages, health insurance, and the issue of compensating circulation managers for use of their personal vehicles. The newspaper said repeatedly in the first weeks of the strike that it has been operating in the red for the past seven years.

Vindicator General Manager Mark Brown said the paper is "plugging along, in very good shape" despite the strike.

"We haven't [seen] a big impact on circulation or advertising," he said Thursday. "We're continuing to deliver to all the customers, and our sales are doing pretty good. It hasn't had a huge impact at all, not even a big impact."

The Vindicator reported a daily circulation of 64,763 for the six months ended March 31. That's down 4 percent from the same period in 2004.

There are hints of small progress in the dispute. Shaulis said the two sides have held off-the-record discussions "trying to exchange some ideas so we can get some momentum in these outstanding issues." Brown confirmed that there have been some informal discussions through the federal mediator.

The union sees other little changes recently in the protracted labor dispute.

For one thing, it says, the professional reporters and editors who have been filling in during the strike on loan from other newspapers, principally those of the Newhouse family's Advance Newspapers, have disappeared. "It's been some time since we've been aware of any Newhouse chain people working here in Youngstown," Shaulis said. "For all we know, Newhouse isn't intending to come back."

In their place, she said, are a number of college interns. "I was an intern 16 years ago, so the Vindicator does have a history of (hiring interns), but it does seem that there are more of them," Shaulis said. Photos of the unidentified presumed interns were published in last week's edition of the strike paper under the headline "Strikebreakers."

Brown, though, said that journalists from other papers continued to fill in at Vindicator. "It's summertime, though, and, as all papers do in the summer, we've gone to interns to cover vacations," he added.

There's also been a slight but noticeable decrease in the number of security guards hired for the labor dispute, Shaulis said. And they've lost their motel rooms, according to the union.

"For the longest time, they had been staying at a Red Roof Inn in one of our suburbs," she said. "But now they are going to sleep in one of the two production buildings."

Brown said the guards are being housed in an empty third-floor of one of the buildings. "We've got a bunch of furniture we're renting from those rent-to-own type places, queen-sized beds and sofas and such," he said. "We had some empty space." The level of security now is similar to that when the strike began, Brown added.

In contrast to the long strike at the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, which was violent in its first weeks and tense for months, the Youngstown strike has been quiet.

"To some extent we've been criticized for that, like we were somewhat an anti-strike," Shaulis said. "But we are professional people. We don't want to see bloodshed on the streets or something. To some people that's a weakness. To me that speaks to how we are professionals."

The union has continued to publish the weekly Valley Voice, a paid paper with a 20,000-copy press run. Every Friday, the paper's content is publicized in spots that run on the market-leading talk and news radio station WKBN-AM. The local also regularly distributes leaflets in front of businesses that continue to advertise in the Vindicator.