By: Mark Fitzgerald Chicago Sun-Times journalists just moved into a new building last week, and now they have vowed to walk out of it next Wednesday unless their Newspaper Guild negotiators can reach agreement on a new contract.
Last month, members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike. This week, after two sessions with a federal mediator ended without a bargaining agreement, the union set a strike deadline of noon on Oct. 20.
Guild-represented newsroom employees at the Sun-Times "are as fired up as I've ever seen them," Jerry Minkkinen, the Guild local's executive director for the past two decades, told E&P last week. Union employees, he said, are angry at revelations that former Publisher F. David Radler, Conrad Black, and other former top Hollinger International executives allegedly took improper payments and fees amounting to $400 million at a time when their last contract included a one-year pay freeze and raises of 1% and 1.25% the following two years.
The union has said it wants a first-year increase of 7.5% followed by 5% increases in each of the following two years. The management offer is a 2% increase for each of the first two years followed by a 1.75% increase for the third year.
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