Tentative 'Seattle Times,' Guild Pact Sees No Wage Increases

By: E&P Staff The money-losing Seattle Times reached a tentative contract agreement Wednesday with the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild that calls for no across-the-board wages increases for two years.

According to a Times article on the settlement by staff reporter Eric Pryne, ratification of the two-year pact is not a done deal. Liz Brown, the Guild local's administrative officer, told the paper that the union's negotiating committee was "strongly divided" over the contract, and that some may recommend rejection in the member vote set for Sept. 13-14.

The Guild represents some 600 employees in the newsroom, circulation, advertising, and marketing departments. The Guild had been working under a six-year contract, reached after a seven-week strike in 2000-2001, that expired last month.

In an unusual move, the Times opened up its books to a Guild economist. The union, the newspaper reported, "confirmed that the paper, when one-time gains from property sales are excluded, had lost millions from 2000 to 2005.

The extent, and cause, of losses during this period is an issue that is now in closed-door arbitration between the Times, controlled by the Blethen family, and its joint operating agreement (JOA) partner, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, owned by Hearst Corp.

The Times has triggered the so-called "loss notice" clause, which calls for the sale of the P-I, an end to the JOA or both if the partnership losses money three consecutive years.

Times principal owner Frank Blethen maintains the cost of publishing the P-I threatens the health of his newspaper company. Hearst says ending the JOA is an effective death sentence for the market-lagging P-I, which owns none of the JOA's production, distribution or administrative operations.

Earlier this year, the two companies agreed to submit to their cases to a retired Washington state judge for binding arbitration with no possibility of appeal. The arbiter is to issue a decision by the end of May 2007.

Last month, the P-I reached a two-year contract with its Guild unit, representing about 140 newsroom employees, that calls for minimum wage increases of $20 a week this year and $25 in 2007.