San Jose Newspaper Workers Protest Layoffs

Faced with imminent layoffs and management’s attempts to eliminate unions, workers from the Northern California Media Workers Union held a picket and press conference in front of the offices of the San Jose Mercury News on Tuesday, June 26, 2007.

Gloria La Riva, Typographical Sector president of the Media Workers Union Local 39521, which represents some of the affected workers, said the layoffs "would create extreme hardship for employees of the Mercury News."

The company has announced that it will lay off all composing room workers on July 1, the day after their contract expires. In all, nearly 30 employees in the advertising and production departments will be affected.

Editorial workers, who are members of the San Jose Newspaper Guild, are also facing layoffs of up to a quarter of their workforce by merging departments among newspapers owned by the parent company, MediaNews Group. When their current two-year contract was signed, editorial workers were told that there would be no more layoffs. Now, according to La Riva, MediaNews Group refuses to negotiate with the Newspaper Guild.

When workers started their pickets in protest, the company threatened to eliminate their severance pay unless they gave up their protests. According to La Riva, many who had worked for the San Jose Mercury News for twenty years or more were contractually entitled to up to 12 weeks of severance pay. "Now that is threatened," she said.

Employees Angelic Nguyen, a composer, and Andrea Luck, who works in the advertising department, explained how they had spent much of their lives working for the San Jose Mercury News and now face an uncertain future.

The picket on Ridder Park Drive in San Jose was supported by the Communication Workers of America, South Bay Labor Council, U.S. Labor Against the War, South Bay Mobilization, and ANSWER.

Based in Denver, Colorado, privately-held MediaNews Group owns 26 newspapers in northern California and a total of 40 daily newspapers in 9 states. The San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Monterey Herald, and St. Paul Pioneer Press were purchased for $1 billion from the McClatchy Newspapers. This immediately followed McClatchy's acquisition of San Jose-based Knight Ridder in 2006, the former owner of the Mercury News.

MediaNews Group has a reputation in the newspaper publishing industry as a cost-cutter. The company buys several daily newspapers in a single area, such as Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area, and consolidates their operations -- sharing staff writers, composers, and printing facilities.

As a result of the cost-cutting, news staff in the Mercury News have already reported that they no longer have the resources to cover many local events that the newspaper formerly would have covered.

San Jose Mercury News managers argue that the cost cutting is driven by the loss of advertising revenue and readership to the Internet.

The Contra Costa Times has already cut 30 jobs in the advertising production department by outsourcing to Express KCS in India. More important than cost-cutting, union representatives say that this is part of the MediaNews Group's strategy to break the unions.

Meanwhile, the company’s profits have skyrocketed to $13.3 million during the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2006, up from $982,000 during the same quarter a year ago.

Union representatives, such as C. J. Wilson of the South Bay Labor Council, say that they want the San Jose Mercury News to succeed, but that serving the growing South Bay community of nearly two million people is more important than always increasing profits.