We'll we've got an update in the oh-so-exciting negotiations between the Media Workers Guild and the management of the San Francisco Chronicle (as you should know by now, part of the Hearst publishing empire). Okay, we know...boring! But damnit, it's good for you. Anyway, in a personal note from Kathleen Rhodes to Guild members, she writes:

The Guild bargaining committee met with management this morning. To my mind it basically repudiated the good faith effort that the Guild has made to deal with the clearly dire financial situation facing the Chronicle. In the face of our willingness to work with them, the company proposal includes dramatic wage cuts (from 2% to 24% -- but with no cuts to Schedule A editorial or outside sales -- and a wage freeze until 1/1/06), the loss of a week's vacation, the loss of a week's sick leave, the loss of 2 holidays, elimination of severance pay, decimation of future pension benefits, the drastic reduction in parental rights for part-time schedules, elimination of sabbatical leaves of absence, and dozens of other changes that save no money whatsoever but broadly impact employee's lives and working conditions.

Late tonight, we got the actual bargaining bulletin, and what struck us was that one of the demands made by management in their "best" offer would prohibit Guild employees from honoring any picket (by, say, the Pressman's Union). If you don't know anything about how unions work, the whole idea is solidarity -- without the employees to write, print and deliver the papers, there's no Chron. Legally limiting their ability to strike in solidarity with other Chron unions basically defangs the threat of any action.

Oh, and if you think that the union members have it cushy as it is, remember that people literally fought and died for such 'benefits' during the history of the labor movement in America and around the world. The fact that they have better benefits than you do doesn't mean they have it easy -- instead, our generation has lost a lot of what was won, and their unions have, until now, successfully been able to defend it.

Photo of Harry Bridges confronting the SFPD during the 1934 General Strike.