-- An update on negotiations --

The following is a letter that we sent last week to all our Vindicator employees, including striking Newspaper Guild members. The letter clarifies a number of matters and sets the record straight. We thought you, our readers, should also know this information.
On the negotiation front, it is strange that the Guild continually claims that The Vindicator will not negotiate, given that the Guild has not requested a negotiating session since our last meeting on January 18th. However, we understand that the Federal Mediators are in the process of scheduling a meeting.
March 1, 2005
Dear Vindicator Employee:
Unfortunately the Guild is continuing its campaign of misinformation. The Guild's negotiating committee is well aware of the facts but apparently has failed to communicate them. All our employees, union and non-union, should understand the facts so we will set the record straight.
1. The use of employee vehicles has now spun to the forefront of the Guild's major issues even though it affects only a very small number of persons. Here are the facts:
* Circulation Employees (Circulation Assistants, part-time Shortage Haulers, and District Managers) will continue to use Company trucks for bulk delivery of bundles just as they did before the strike, a fact which the Guild negotiating committee was told but ignores. This means, for example, that Circulation Assistants who drive Company trucks for bulk delivery would continue to drive trucks to make bulk delivery to carriers and after making the delivery would continue to use the Company trucks for their work, including delivering down routes and shortages, just as they have in the past.
*Twenty-three Circulation employees, including fourteen part-time Shortage Haulers, were already using their own vehicles prior to the start of the strike for which they were paid the negotiated mileage rates in the old collective bargaining agreement based on the average cost of full and self-serve gasoline in the area.
* Editorial and Classified Advertising employees represented by the Guild have used their own vehicles for years.
*The $300,000 vehicle insurance provision is nothing new. That provision was agreed to by the Guild, without a strike, in the last negotiations and was contained in the old collective bargaining agreement.
* Under the old collective bargaining agreement, most District Managers have had the opportunity to purchase a Company vehicle for $1 and to receive an additional $500 bonus payment.
*The Company's proposal would affect only five part-time employees and sixteen District Managers. Eight District Managers already use their own vehicles. Twenty-three Circulation Assistants do bulk deliveries and would use Company trucks. The remaining part-time employees were either already using their own vehicles or doing bulk deliveries with Company trucks, which would continue.
2. The vast majority of persons in the lower paid positions to which the Guild continuously refers are part-time employees. Nevertheless the Company had proposed a combination of wage increases and bonuses totaling 4.7 percent in year one, 4.6 percent in year two, and 3.1 percent in the third year for the lowest paid Shortage Hauler position.
3. The Company's health care premium proposals have already been agreed to by the Teamsters and the Pressmen. In addition the Company's proposal included a waiver of Guild covered employee contributions for health insurance for at least four months (longer if management employees do not contribute) with a savings to an employee of up to $24.46 per week (depending on the employee's classification and coverage).
4. The Guild continues to claim that The Vindicator will not permit a review of its operating income statements. The Guild's claim is not true. While not obligated to do so, The Vindicator has offered to allow an independent auditor to conduct a thorough, complete confidential review of its operating income statements and as the Guild knows that offer still stands. However, the Guild has insisted that the review be conducted by its own auditor and be public, not confidential.
5. The Guild continues to publicly state that employees who crossed the picket line and worked during the 1964 strike were fired when that strike was settled. The Guild's state-ments are not true. No employee who worked during the 1964 strike was terminated when the strike was settled. In fact, after the strike, certain named individuals were not even required to join the Guild or to pay Guild dues and fees.
6. The Guild now refers to the Company's proposal to eliminate unnecessary mandatory overtime for the District Managers as a refusal "to properly staff the circulation depart-ment." This change in terms may be designed to obscure the fact that the gross earnings of the striking Circulation District Managers increased by about 10 percent over the last two years and averaged over $46,000 in 2003. The Guild's answer to unnecessary over-time has been to propose that the Company hire unneeded new employees to perform un-necessary work. That is adding unnecessary cost, not proper staffing.
7. The Guild complains about the four newspaper groups that are assisting The Vindicator, but these groups are preserving the Guild's union jobs and keeping it from destroying itself and the Company -- not breaking the union. Unlike the Guild's Valley Voice which is produced by a non-union publishing company, printed by a non-union printer and distributed by a non-union distribution company, The Vindicator is a union newspaper whose three unions, the Teamsters (packaging department), the GCIU (pressmen), and the ITU/CWA (platemakers), are continuing to work during this strike to serve our readers, advertisers and community. The Vindicator is and will be a union newspaper even if employees who work for the Company were to change.
8. The Vindicator has not laid off any union or nonunion employees in the last 20 years even though it has suffered through 7 straight years of operating losses. The Guild has thanked us with a strike for our attempt to keep all of our union employees employed.
Decisions that are made during a strike should be based on facts and not fiction. We hope that we will soon be able to welcome all of our Guild represented employees back to work. This strike has lasted much too long.
Betty Jagnow, publisher
Mark Brown, general manager