HAWAII NEWSPAPER GUILD

Local 39117, The Newspaper Guild / CWA, AFL-CIO, CLC

1347 Kapiolani Blvd., Ste. 404 - HONOLULU, HAWAII 96814

Telephone 808-949-1654 ¬Ý¬ÝFAX 808-942-5991

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

CONTACT: ¬ÝWayne Cahill, 808-295-5656

¬ÝHunter Bishop 808-969-3088 / 808-987-5186 / 808-965-1009

Hilo reporters suspended for recording meeting; company attacks on union employees continuing

Hawaii Tribune-Herald Editor David Bock sent reporters Dave Smith and Peter Sur home Thursday, March 9, on indefinite suspension without pay, after learning that Smith had secretly recorded a recent meeting among Smith, Bock and an assistant manager.

Sur, who was suspended for giving a digital audio recorder to Smith prior to the meeting, was called back to Saturday, March 11, following 1.5 days off without pay.

Smith made the recording on March 3 because he believed the meeting, which concerned his alleged failure to write enough stories for the newspaper, was potentially a disciplinary matter that allowed him the right to union representation at the meeting.

When another reporter was called into Bock's office immediately before Smith and denied the right to have a union representative attend his meeting, which concerned the same issue regarding that reporter, Sur gave the recorder to Smith who turned it on and put it in his pocket to preserve an accurate record of the meeting. He was also denied a union representative.

Union representation at such meetings is established under federal laws governing labor-management relations in the workplace. About 50 employees of the newspaper, including Smith and Sur, are represented by the Hawaii Newspaper Guild Local 39117, TNG/CWA, which is filing formal grievances against the newspaper on behalf of both employees.

Wayne Cahill, administrative officer for the Guild in Honolulu, said that neither employee did anything wrong.

Hawaii is among 38 states and the District of Columbia where a surreptitious recording of a meeting is legal as long as one participant in the meeting has knowledge of it. The Tribune-Herald also has no policy prohibiting the recording of meetings. Yet Smith, an 18-year veteran of the newspaper, remains suspended indefinitely without pay. Neither Smith nor Sur have been formally told why they were placed on suspension.

The actions follow a series of extremely aggressive disciplinary actions taken by the company against active union employees.

Smith, part of the union's contract negotiating team, was suspended following the March 6 firing of union activist Willie Garcia, a part-time inserter in the newspaper's Circulation Department. Garcia admitted failing to clock out properly from work on one occasion in February and was fired for his first offense. Garcia, also active with the union, recently filed a grievance against Circulation Department Manager Bill Crawford and the company alleging discrimination in promotion procedures.

Sixteen-year reporter and long-time union shop steward Hunter Bishop was fired in October for raising issues about the rights of a fellow employee being called into a potentially disciplinary meeting with management. A grievance was also filed seeking reinstatement on Bishop's behalf.

“All of these events, especially this week's, indicate that the union is clearly under increasingly open attack by the company,” Cahill said.

Formal negotiations for a new contract have been stalled since 2002, when employees received their last one percent pay raise.

The major issue, however, is union-busting, said Cahill. “This company has declared all-out war on its union employees,” he said. Bargaining talks are currently stalled over the company's insistence on a new “management rights” clause in the contract that would permit the company to dismantle the union, he said.

“This is a mainland-owned company that's making lots of money on the Big Island with the help of its union employees, yet it wants to get rid of the union,” Cahill said. “This newspaper's managers are not as concerned about quality of the paper as they are about sending more profits off the Big Island and back to their owners in Arkansas.”

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