By: Mark Fitzgerald Newspaper Guild and management negotiators at the Chicago Sun-Times will keep talking past Friday, the first day the union would be able to start a strike its membership authorized by an overwhelming vote.
Bob Mutter, co-chairman of the Sun-Times Guild unit, said Wednesday night that the union has never set a strike deadline and will attend two negotiating sessions scheduled for next week. Because it filed for federal mediation, the Guild could not start a strike until Oct. 8 -- which happens to be the day newspaper employees move from the building along the Chicago River to new digs a few blocks away. The Sun-Times building will be demolished this fall to make way for a luxury condo and hotel complex being developed by Donald Trump.
Mutter said the talks have been "very painful and slow." He said that in a session this week management negotiators showed "glacial" movement on their wage proposal and had offered a three-year contract with wage increases of 2% the first two years and 1.5% in the final year.
The Guild is asking for a first-year increase of 9%, arguing that it needs to make up for tiny increases and wage freezes during a period when former Publisher F. David Radler, former Hollinger International CEO Conrad Black, and other top Hollinger executives allegedly took as much as $400 million in improper fees and payments.
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