CHICAGO—In Chicago, some things never change. “Da Bears” start with high hopes. So does the new mayor. And the Chicago Tribune, dating back to the multi-decade reign of infamous Col. Robert R. McCormick—which ended 69 years ago—screws its workers. Now, Alden Global Capital, the secretive uncontrolled hedge fund that devours newspapers, continues its McCormick imitation.
After all, how else do you describe what happened to Wendy Fox-Weber?
Cast back a little more than six years, to when the Tribune staff, faced with the prospect of Alden’s takeover, broke more than a century and a half of bosses’ worker hate, and unionized with the Chicago News Guild. This was the equivalent of a pro-worker earthquake, even for the Windy City. Coming along with them were the staffers at the Trib’s suburban papers, which ring Chicago.
Then bargaining began, and bosses stalled. Meanwhile, Alden kept cutting staff, by “30%-40% in just the last three months” after the pact was signed, says Chicago News Guild President Andy Grimm.
Most of the job cuts occurred after Alden took over from the former owners, one of whom, Sam Zell, drove the paper and its parent Tribune Co., into bankruptcy. Besides slashing workers and stalling in bargaining, Alden also tried to impose higher healthcare costs on the staff. Alden sold the iconic Tribune Tower and its real estate, too.
The Guild planned to file two labor law-breaking—formally called unfair labor practices—complaints about the health care changes with the National Labor Relations Board. That forced an Alden about-face. The new pact significantly cuts worker contributions to health care premiums instead.
Wendy Fox-Weber went through it all. Sam Zell. The organizing drive. The union recognition vote. The sale to Alden. The sale of Tribune Tower. And the bargaining team. It’s not a stretch to say Fox-Weber was the heart and soul of the bargaining team—the only one there through thick and thin, with the institutional memory of what it was like pre-Guild and what it’s been like at the negotiating table.
But now the bargaining is over. The contract is won. And what does Alden do? It eliminates Fox-Weber’s job as the suburban papers’ entertainment editor. And terminates her. In three weeks.
Unfortunately, the contract for the suburban papers has a management rights loophole which not only allows “reductions in force”—read “firings”—due to finances but also lets bosses pick and choose who they want to can by skipping strict seniority standings. Foxx-Weber’s been with the suburban papers, through all their regimes, for almost four decades. The bosses picked her to be fired.
The move is legal under the contract, but when the announcement came at the Chicago Guild’s September meeting, it stank. One member called it “an act of anti-union aggression.”
It also sounds like an open-and-shut case of management retaliation against a top union activist. Thanks to that loophole in the contract, the answer to that possibility is “no.”
So the Guild wants readers and staffers to flood management’s e-mail boxes with mass complaints. The general manager of Tribune Publishing, Par Ridder, is at pridder@tribpub.com, its website says.
“It is not lost on our members that the first staffing cuts after signing a historic contract targeted one of our most vocal and effective leaders,” the Chicago Guild says on its website.
A protest letter will be posted on the Action Network. The arts and entertainment scene in Chicago’s suburbs, is, after all, lively. And there will be no replacement for Fox-Weber. But it’s also the principle of sticking up for a colleague who’s been unfairly trashed.
Alden also is letting ten-year Pioneer Press editorial assistant Nancy Swanson go. Same loophole excuse. Pioneer includes papers in Chicago’s near-northern suburbs such as Evanston and Wilmette. Swanson “was the friendly voice on the other end of the line when readers called with questions, complaints or praise, and was proud of her work on dozens of community-focused coverage areas,” the Guild adds.
“We’re still digging and we’re still fighting because they”—the Tribune staffers and the suburban staffers, too—“work for the worst publisher in the industry, Alden,” says Grimm.
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