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Teamsters Settle Contract Dispute with Vindicator
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- A $1,000 signing bonus immediately, another $1,000 bonus six months from now but no pay raise. That's what it took for members of Teamsters Local 437 to "overwhelmingly" ratify a new one-year contract with The Vindicator that includes a 15% co-pay for health insurance premiums.The vote -- the final tally was not disclosed -- was taken Sunday morning at Irish Bob's. As union members exited the tavern after ratifying the tentative agreement reached Saturday, their chief steward, Mike Ross, told reporters the Teamsters would return to work tonight.That leaves 175 members of the Youngstown Newspaper Guild still manning the picket lines set up Nov. 16 outside the Mahoning Valley's largest daily newspaper.The 23 Teamsters are employed in The Vindicator's mailroom, where they package pre-printed advertising materials for insertion into the newspaper. They were working without a contract when the Guild went on strike Nov. 16 after their contract expired. The Teamsters immediately joined the picket lines and vowed their members would not return to work until the Guild had a new contract. The Guild made the same vow -- their members would not return to work until the Teamsters had a contract. But more than eight weeks into the walkout, the Teamsters could not afford to miss another paycheck, Ross said Sunday. "Our people were being strapped with Cobra [health-care] payments," he told WFMJ. By next week, striking Teamsters with family health care coverage would have a "$2,000 bill to cover the Cobra," he said. "That's too much of a burden for our people."Cobra is the acronym for a federal law that requires, among its many dictates, that employers continue health-care coverage during a union work stoppage if the striking employee pays the cost of his premium.The 15% co-pay for health insurance premiums agreed to by the Teamsters amounts to $24 per week for family coverage and $11 per week for single coverage, Ross said.When co-pay premiums for family coverage are computed on an annualized basis, then subtracted from the $2,000 signing bonus, the new Teamsters contract provides workers an extra $752 this year in pre-tax dollars."We had made a pledge not to go back to work without the Teamsters, and we had hoped they would do the same for us -- but they didn't," said Anthony Markota, president of Local 34011 of The Newspaper Guild--Communication Workers of America. "But we respect the Teamsters' decision to go back to work and we wish them well."The guild represents reporters, photographers, page designers, circulation and classified advertising employees. Its membership voted Dec. 8, by a tally of 99 to 33, to reject what The Vindicator termed its "best and final offer." No negotiations have taken place since."We would hope Mark Brown," general manager of The Vindicator, "would come back to the bargaining table and negotiate with the Guild," Markota said. "We stand ready to negotiate seven days a week, 24 hours a day, to get a contract."In today's edition of The Vindicator, Brown is quoted as saying, "The Teamsters took a realistic view of the company's financial situation, and we were able to work out a reasonable settlement much as we did with the pressmen a few months ago. We hope that at some point the Guild will take a reasonable view, too."In a story on the strike published yesterday by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Brown said The Vindicator lost money for the eighth consecutive year -- 2004 -- partly because of the strike. "We've made our last offer. It's not going to get any better," he told the Post Gazette.According to the story, "If the strike drags and The Vindicator's losses continue, Brown said, one thing is certain: The company will reduce the offer it made to strikers."The Vindicator has hired temporary workers truck drivers to replace striking Guild members. Rotating crews of reporters, photographers and copy editors have been sent to The Vindicator from newspapers owned by Advance Publications, a unit of the Newhouse family's communications conglomerate."