Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
PHILADELPHIA (AFX) - The new owner of Philadelphia's two major dailies and its unions agreed Tuesday to extend their current contracts for a month.
Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, which bought the two dailies in June, has reached tentative agreements on broad outlines with six of 10 unions at The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. The remaining contracts were set to expire at midnight Tuesday.
Among the contracts not yet settled is the one for the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, which represents more than 900 editorial and other employees.
"The Guild will aggressively pursue a fair contract and will keep pressure on the company to bargain in good faith," said spokesman Stu Bykofsky, a Daily News columnist.
The unions and management are negotiating over issues such as job cuts, eliminating seniority status for union employees, freezing the pension and merging the two papers' editorial departments.
The editorial workers already have voted to authorize a strike if negotiations fail.
The company earlier said it had 12 unions. It actually has 10 unions working under 12 contracts. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
Copyright 2006 AFX News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
