By: Samuel Chamberlain After six months of negotiations, the Lake Superior Newspaper Guild has voted to approve a new contract with the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune. The new contract provides for Guild members to receive a 1.5% pay raise in each year of the contract.
However, the deal also requires guild members to pay more for health insurance in the final two years of the agreement.
Ninety percent of the voters in the Guild -- which represents 125 members of the 225-person staff, including members of the news, advertising, circulation, maintenance, and prepress departments -- voted to approve the new contract, which will be retroactively applied from Jan. 1 of this year through the end of 2010. Contract negotiations began in December 2007.
Guild President Peter Passi, a News Tribune business reporter, told reporter Patrick Garmoe that employees will be making less money than under the previous deal once the increase in employee-paid health premiums is included, but that the contract was generally fair.
?Given the state of the industry, we felt compelled to make some concessions,? Passi added.
Currently, employees pay 30% of their health premium for family coverage. However, that number could increase to as much as 45% over 2009 and 2010. In April, eight employees accepted contract buyouts, while six more employees were laid off. Publisher Steve McLister told Garmoe that the new deal, the layoffs, and buyouts improve the fiscal outlook for the paper, saying ?We are better positioned now to move into the future.?
Another part of the agreement requires that both sides partner in a grant
application to the state of Minnesota to provide employee training of Web-based skills, similar to newspapers around the country who are increasing investment into their Web sites.
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