Talks Begin Between Guild, Chron

SFist managed to get their hands on the latest memo to the members of the Northern California Media Workers Guild at the Chronicle. Looks like they have now entered into negotiations with the management of the Chronicle. What's troubling is that unlike previous contract negotiations, which involved all the locals that represent employees together as the Chronicle Newspaper Unions, each local is now bargaining on their own (the Teamsters have already renegotiated their terms until 2010). The writer's Guild hopes to have a contract ironed out by February, and the other union employees contracts expire in July.

Guild negotiators said their members have been skeptical about recent management claims that labor concessions are needed to put the newspaper on a more solid financial footing. In particular, [Writer's Guild Executive Officer and CNU Chair Doug] Cuthbertson said hard proof of economic need will be necessary to convince members of the need for any sacrifices.

"We may have to seek verification of the company’s claims of financial distress at some point," Cuthbertson said. "We've heard a lot of rumors, and we know as well as anyone how soft business conditions have been in recent years. We have not yet seen real numbers, and we haven’t seen evidence yet that management has a credible plan to steer us through the challenges."

In what we assume is related news, new Chronicle Publisher Frank "Darth" Vega has brought in Gary Anderson from his team at Detroit Newspapers:

Anderson has been with Detroit Newspapers for much of his career. Trained in accounting, Anderson has overseen a variety of departments including Finance, Information Systems, Production and Human Resources. Throughout his career, Anderson has been associated with success and has won numerous awards from the Gannett Company for outstanding financial management.

And as anyone who's been following modern business practices (or saw what happened in the Detroit media market) can tell you, "outstanding financial management" generally means reducing costs -- especially labor -- to the bare minimum. At least SFist seriously doubts that Anderson won any awards due to an explosion in the Gannett Company's advertising revenue, since newspaper advertising revenue has been taking hits across the country for years now.