Newspaper Guild assents to The Sun’s buyout terms

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - After four days of negotiations over the Baltimore Sun Media Group’s buyout package — offered along with its recently announced 100-person reduction in force — the Baltimore-Washington Newspaper Guild has agreed to most of the company’s original terms.

“The company will accept applications to the buyout until July 11,” Tanika White, Guild unit co-chairwoman at The Sun, said Monday, “After that, it will determine how many it’s gotten and in which classifications — and if it doesn’t have enough, it will probably implement a layoff.”

The nearly 400-person labor unit is down from about 500 members a year ago, due largely to cutbacks of 45 earlier this year — four in layoffs — and another 45 last year.

The union, which represents reporters, photographers, copy editors, columnists and designers among others at The Sun, has shrunk 34 percent since 2003.

White said the union had resisted the company’s payoff provision — one week of pay for every six months of service, with a minimum of six weeks and a maximum of 52 weeks’ pay.

But in the end it agreed. It won its case for seniority being the sole determinant of buyout awards when surplus applications in job classifications arose.

Company health insurance coverage will continue for buyout recipients on the same time-formula basis as the payoff provision, White said.

The Baltimore Sun Media Group — a subsidiary of Tribune Co., owner of 11 dailies and 23 broadcasting stations — owns The Sun and 21 weeklies, which together comprise about 1,400 employees. It hopes to cut another 100, with about 60 from the 300-person newsroom, by August.

Personnel cutbacks, due largely to newspaper industry revenue declines, have been extensive throughout Tribune’s properties — both before and since its $8.4 billion privatization move in January.

“We believe newspapers have a public service mission, and obviously this reduces our ability to serve the public,” Bill Salganik, president of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, said in a news release.

“Beyond that, however, we believe it’s not only bad for the public, it’s bad for Tribune.”