The North Bay Newspaper Guild is frustrated by layoffs, consolidations and looming contract clawbacks as the Nugget’s corporate owners squeeze small-town assets to shore up losses in bigger centres.
A Facebook page, Friends of Local News, was launched today to express the unsavoury bargaining position 70 remaining Nugget employees are being forced into.
“We don’t want to strike, we don’t want to attack our employer, we want to grow the newspaper and its online products,” said Dave Dale, president of the Guild, a member of the CWA-Canada union.
“But negotiations are not going well as Sun Media erodes the benefit structure and offers pennies to the inserting mailroom employees who already earn the least amount — just today they proposed reducing the beginning hourly pay to minimum wage for any new hires.”
The frustration of losing eight more workers to layoffs this spring, which follows a previous layoff of six before Christmas 2008, as well as reduced front office hours, and recent tight-fisted bargaining positions has forced the Guild to seek the support of local readers and advertisers.
For the first time in 20 years, the Guild has bought an advertisement on a city bus asking supporters to: “Demand More Local Employment from Your Local Newspaper. The ad directs fans of local news to the Guild website at www.nbng.org where people are urged to send an email or letter to the Nugget publisher.
“And we hope the message is eventually heard in the top offices of Quebecor where the strategy to cut local assets and services to feed the corporate coffers begins,” Dale said.
“We have to do something and we hope this small step convinces the Nugget local services and employment is the key to success.”
