'Blade' to Meet With Locked-Out Workers, But Undecided On Guild Move

By: Joe Strupp One month after it began locking out more than 220 union workers, The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, is set to begin its first negotiations with the five locked-out bargaining units -- but executives remain undecided about whether a Newspaper Guild lockout will occur.

General Manager Joe Zerbey said running the newspaper without the 350-member guild unit would not be a problem, calling it "a piece of cake."

"That is the easiest part of the whole deal," Zerbey said Thursday. "That would be a slam-dunk for us."

Spokeswoman LuAnn Sharp said the Blade had made arrangements with several newspapers to borrow their non-union workers as emergency replacements for guild members if a lockout occurred. She declined to identify the newspapers, but said they had already helped with temporary replacements for the locked-out workers in the first few days.

"Most of the newspapers are either non-union or unionized on a more limited basis," Sharp said. "We have been involved with this group for more than a year."

The lockout of the unions began Aug. 20 with members of the Graphic Communications International Union, which represent a combined 18 employees in the engravers and paper handlers units. It later expanded to three more unions when about 200 employees represented by the Teamsters Local 20, Toledo Typographical Local 63, and Toledo Mailers Local 1135 were barred from employment. Those workers handle jobs that range from driving papers to drop-off points for carriers to processing some advertisements.

Sharp said only about 125 replacement workers have been needed to do the locked-out employees' work, although she admitted that the paper had to moved up some news deadlines for a while to allow for the smaller workforce to publish the paper. She said deadlines have since returned to normal.

Zerbey claims that the replacement workers have been able to get the job down with fewer people because they have not been under union rules. "We have been able to find out how to really manage the place," Zerbey said. "We can get the work down quicker, without overtime, with fewer people," he said.

Still, Zerbey contends that the paper wants to come to agreements with the five locked-out unions, which are among seven Blade unions still seeking new contracts. Sharp said the paper planned to hold its first bargaining sessions with the locked-out workers since the lockouts began. She said the first meeting would be Friday with the mailers unit, followed by the other four on Monday and Tuesday.

"I like the fact that we are finally meeting," she said. "Let's get going."

Larry Vellequette, a spokesman for the Toledo Council of Newspaper Unions, said he did not hold out much hope for progress during the upcoming negotiations if the paper does not give in on some of its proposals. He said the union had agreed to a 5% salary cut and new employee contributions for health care benefits. But he said the workers do not want to give in on a clause that, he contends, would allow management "unlimited and unfettered right to do whatever they wanted."

Vellequette contends that the newspaper wants to remove any jurisdictional limits on what workers can be required to do. "They haven't changed that position since February," he said.

The guild has held only one recent bargaining session, Sharp said, with representatives of the unit's advertising group meeting Wednesday night. Zerbey said the paper is seeking a change in the commission format that would provide a smaller base salary for ad sales people and a higher portion based on commissions.

When asked if the newspaper was seeking to break the unions, Zerby said "absolutely not....How do you break a union when you lock them out? They have a right to their jobs back," he said. "It has to do with changing the culture at the Blade so we are allowed to manage it and make a profit. We are not making a profit."

Vellequette said he did not believe the paper was seeking to break the unions, adding "they just want to strip them of any meaning."