Union-busting comes to PD

The Plain Dealer is joining union-busters like Cox and Gatehouse Media.

The PD Guild said the PD will boot out 29 copyediting and designing Guild members and farm their work out to non-union Advance Local.

PD Guild members can switch to Advance Local and do the same work, but with being in a union.

Union-busting in 2018.

Gatehouse Media has some of the BJ work done in Austin, avoiding paying Guild members in Akron for doing it.

The PD Guild’s post:

The Plain Dealer News Guild

The Plain Dealer informed the Guild today it would move forward with a plan to outsource the jobs of 29 Guild and management employees who copy edit, curate and... design our newspaper.

The Plain Dealer unit of the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild for months has fought to keep this work in Cleveland because the Guild knows that having local journalists, with knowledge of the community, would produce the best newspaper.

The company had a proposal from the Guild that offered significant savings and would preserve quality. The company could not assure the Guild, other than with platitudes, that the other “bidders” would treat Guild work with the same care.

Instead, the company made its choice based on “cost savings and efficiencies.”

Plain Dealer readers deserve more than a cookie cutter newspaper.

The Guild has seen examples of mistakes in other papers using the centralized production model that concern the Guild greatly.

Plain Dealer Editor George Rodrigue told the public that all decisions about content would rest with The Plain Dealer but, based on Guild conversations with Rodrigue, that does not appear to be entirely true.

The Guild believes this clearly is a union-busting move as the company has said some non-union jobs would be offered to current employees who do essentially the same duties now but would have to work for Advance Local, which is a part of the same overall company.