AS THE PROJO TURNS Guild pact awaits implementation, and the Globe’s ‘scoop’ BY IAN DONNIS

After voting in December to end a nearly four-year contract dispute with the Providence Journal Company, members of the Providence Newspaper Guild continue to anticipate the new pact’s implementation. "I think there will be a decent level of satisfaction with the first check," says Guild president John Hill, particularly since the agreement will bring thousands of dollars in retroactive pay for some union members.

The National Labor Relations Board has yet to offer final approval for the deal, although the outlook seems positive.

Guild Leader, the union’s online newsletter (www.riguild.org), recently reported that NLRB supervisory attorney Scott F. Burson wrote to lawyers for the ProJo and the Guild, indicating that he had prepared a motion to the NLRB, which must "make an independent judgment into the fairness and adequacy of the settlement. That being said, I do not anticipate any problem with the board’s approval of this motion, and the regional director’s subsequent acceptance of the withdrawal of these [unfair labor practice] charges [against the Journal Company] as well as the associated complaints and answers."

In a significant victory for the Guild, the pitched battle between the union and ProJo management came to a surprisingly swift end when a December negotiating session produced an agreement backed by the union’s executive committee. The Guild, which represents more than 400 reporters, photographers, and other employees at the newspaper, then approved the pact, 238-15, ending what union members had described as an effort to smash the union. Management at the ProJo and the Dallas-based Belo Corporation, which bought the paper in 1997, have denied any anti-union motivation.

Although Guild members continue to await the contract’s implementation, veteran reporter Karen Lee Ziner, who was assigned in 2001 to the night police beat — deemed by an NLRB judge as an illegal and punitive action — has enjoyed a more immediate benefit. Ziner, who was welcome back to dayside work a few weeks ago with chocolate cake, flowers, and a standing ovation in the newsroom, describes the past labor battle as counter-productive. "But Rhode Island is still a great place," she adds, "and it still needs dedicated journalists. I’m hoping things settle down now."

In other news, Hill says the Guild is focusing on strengthening its relations with the kind of unions and social justice groups that lent support during the standoff with management. "In a lot of ways, I think we’re on the way to becoming a real union," he says. Although the Guild has traditionally resisted close ties with other groups for fear of even perceptual conflicts, the dynamics of the marketplace — in which a company like Belo owns several other newspapers and a number of television stations — compels a different approach, Hill says. "We need to look at people and organizations that can help us and who we can also help," he says.

Meanwhile, some local eyebrows were raised after the Boston Globe broke the story on January 22 of how Attorney General Patrick Lynch brought federal investigators into the investigation about possible undue business influence at the General Assembly. The significance of this development seemed slightly exaggerated, since, as the ProJo’s Mike Stanton reported the next day, the probe remained under state control. Still, it was easy to wonder whether Lynch, whose relations with the Journal have sometimes been fractious, handed a scoop to the out-of-town Globe.

Lynch spokesman Michael Healey, however, says the Boston paper’s story came after a lull in which the AG’s office hadn’t heard from the Journal for a few days, and the Globe’s Thanassis Cambanis came to town to do a catch-up story on the probe. "Maybe it was in the context that Patrick had just met with some of the federal officials," Healey says. "The reporter asked him the question about federal involvement, and Patrick just answered it."