By: (AP) Nearly 100 staffers from The Wall Street Journal picketed the newspaper's headquarters in New York Wednesday as relations with the company's main union turned increasingly tense.
The protest lasted just under an hour and was aimed at pressuring the company ahead of the next bargaining session, which is scheduled for April 14. The newspaper's employees have been working without a contract for a year.
Besides the picketing, most of the newspaper's reporters at the New York headquarters showed up for work at about 1:30 p.m. as part of a work-to-rule job action. The union's contract calls for a 35-hour work week, but the reporters often put in far longer hours.
E.S. Browning, a stock market reporter with 25 years' experience at the paper, said that the normally collegial atmosphere at the Journal between reporters and management was breaking down, particularly since the company was seeking cutbacks in health care coverage at the same time that top managers were receiving large pay increases.
Browning said about 100 staffers participated over the course of the protest, with about 70 to 85 people present at any given time.
Dow Jones spokeswoman Brigitte Trafford said the company "remains confident that a mutually agreeable settlement will be reached." She declined to comment about the picketing.
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