On Wednesday, Gazette Publisher Alan Allnutt sent the following letter to employees:

To All Gazette Employees:

On Jan. 14 the company tabled final contract proposals to the Guild. Last Sunday the Guild submitted the proposals to its members. The advertising unit accepted it, while editorial and RSS units turned it down. At the same time, those units instructed their negotiating committee in a resolution to return to the table to try and resolve the jurisdiction issue in a way “that meets the needs of both the Gazette and its employees.”

This afternoon (Jan. 28) the two sides met in the presence of a conciliator. The Guild presented a proposal on jurisdiction that unfortunately does not meet the needs of the company. In addition, the Guild proposed reopening many other issues that the company considers closed under its final offer. The company told the Guild that it remains open to other proposals on jurisdiction that would satisfy both parties. We remain hopeful that a resolution on this issue can be reached.

Sincerely,

Alan Allnutt

Publisher and General Manager

UPDATE: A response from the bargaining committee:

Clarification

While it is not our intention to bargain by bulletin we wish to clarify statements made by the Publisher in an e-mail to all employees yesterday.

On Sunday, the members in Editorial and RSS voted to reject the Company’s “final offer” and adopted a resolution mandating the bargaining committee to resume negotiations for a fair contract. Your message was loud and clear: negotiate a deal that will resolve jurisdiction and all outstanding issues to conclude a fair agreement.

At yesterday’s meeting before a conciliator the Guild made proposals on all outstanding issues which included movement on most. Contrary to the impression left by the Publisher’s statement, the outstanding issues are not “closed” and remain to be negotiated. Among the proposals yesterday were several that agreed with the company’s latest proposals.

We have committed to bargaining in good faith and expect the company to act in the same manner. We have given the company a counter proposal and it is now up to them to provide us with a counter offer.

Your Bargaining Committee

In meetings Sunday, two bargaining units of the Montreal Newspaper Guild rejected a contract offer presented by The Gazette, while a third accepted an offer for a two-year contract.

A resolution passed by members of the Montreal Newspaper Guild (MNG) instructing their bargaining team to meet with the employer and achieve an agreement was sent to the conciliator, who won the company’s approval to set up a meeting for this Wednesday.

David Wilson, the CWA Canada staff representative who has been leading the negotiations, says of the membership: “They’re pumped!” He notes that “this is the furthest this Local has ever gone in standing up for itself — and they mean it.”

The 181 employees in three bargaining units — Advertising, Editorial and Reader Sales & Service (RSS) — have been without a contract since June 1, 2008. Sunday afternoon, Editorial voted 80.5 per cent and RSS 73 per cent, to reject the company’s offer. Later in the day, Advertising voted 65 per cent in favour of accepting the deal.

The lobby of the hotel where the MNG meetings and votes took place was jammed with journalists from every news outlet in the city, says Wilson. Labour strife in the media had hit the headlines a day earlier, when the Quebecor-owned Journal de Montréal locked out 250 editorial and office employees.

Although both sides at The Gazette have been in a legal strike/lockout position since early last summer, and the union voted 86 per cent in favour of a strike mandate in September, “We’ve told the employer and the public that we have no intention of striking at this time,” says Wilson. “We hope to conclude a fair agreement at some point in the near future.”

Management at the CanWest-owned daily wants language removed from the three collective agreements that gives the MNG jurisdiction over work performed by its members. Without that language, the company would be free to ship the employees’ work to other company facilities that are not unionized.

Guild jurisdiction has been a critical issue ever since Gazette management laid off 45 RSS employees in June and exported their work to a CanWest call centre in Winnipeg.

The MNG is also grieving the transfer of other work — layout of some pages and the Driving section, electronic photo desk functions, business office duties — to non-unionized CanWest facilities in Hamilton and Winnipeg. That grievance is scheduled to go to arbitration next month.

The MNG maintains that contracts for all three bargaining units “clearly prohibit the assignment of such work either to employees of the same employer not covered by our collective agreement or to employees outside The Gazette.”

Meanwhile, an online petition against CanWest’s job outsourcing that was set up in October, had garnered 7,152 signatures as of today.

Vote results

• Editorial: For 23, Against 95
• Reader Sales and Service: For 4, Against 11
• Advertising: For 17, Against 9

Motion passed by Editorial/RSS

Whereas the contract language proposed by Gazette management would lead to widespread outsourcing of our work and significant loss of jobs;

Therefore, be it resolved that we instruct the Guild’s bargaining committee to resume negotiations in good faith with the goal of reaching an agreement that meets the needs of both the Gazette and its employees.

Editorial and Reader Sales and Service bargaining units

We think Montrealers deserve a newspaper created by Montrealers who know and love the city.

Canwest is already laying out some Gazette pages and writing some headlines in Hamilton, Ont. Next it would want to outsource the editing of the articles on those pages to Hamilton.

And after that? 

Would you believe having a reporter covering Montreal city politics from another part of Canada? 

That’s just the scenario that emerged when Bernard Asselin, The Gazette’s vice president of marketing and reader sales, was interviewed by Mike Finnerty on Daybreak, CBC Radio’s Montreal morning show.

Asselin was asked what types of Gazette jobs Canwest wants to ship to other parts of Canada.

Asselin: It’s not someone from outside the province going to city hall to cover Mayor Tremblay’s press conference

Finnerty: That’s not going to happen?

Asselin: Well, not at this point. This is the core product

Finnerty: Not at this point or not ever?

Asselin: Not at this point but you know what, the busines model is broken right now in the newspaper industry. … We need to look at all the options and be flexible. 

Click here to listen to the entire Jan. 27 interview, as well as an interview with Guild representative Irwin Block.

At a meeting yesterday, with publisher Alan Allnutt, the Montreal Newspaper Guild agreed to present the company’s latest contract proposals on Sunday, for a vote.

As a result, the General Membership meeting has been postponed, and in its place, two unit meetings will be held:

Main Unit: 11 a.m.

Advertising: 1 p.m.

Intercontinental Hotel, 360 St. Antoine West, Old Montreal (St. Antoine entrance)