We care about your daily newspaper!

For Immediate Release: Oct. 26, 2005
Contact: Jonathan Ment
845 430 4030 or 518 734 6985

Newspaper Workers Appeal to the Public to Pressure the Daily Freeman
A Protest and an Informational Picket are planned for the coming week.

KINGSTON - The union employees of the Daily Freeman, based in Kingston and owned by Trenton, NJ-based Journal Register Co., have been without a contract for more than 13 months.

Employees are members of The Newspaper Guild -Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO. They work in sales, and editorial capacities, as well as circulation, the classified department, the business office, art services and under a separate contract in the mailroom and delivery vans.

Collective bargaining, held off-premises due to a corporate mandate, has produced little progress beyond matters of housekeeping.

The company has through attrition and management practice created a short-staffed newsroom and, the Union believes, is shortchanging readers with less local news and features.

The Union’s repeated attempts to demonstrate how these tactics harm both the company and the community have been rebuffed.

Members of Local 31180, TNG-CWA will visit Coleman High School on Hurley Avenue, on Saturday Oct. 29, 2005 for the Daily Freeman’s “Cut it Out” auction to hand out “Hell Bank Notes” bearing the message “Tell the Daily Freeman to Cut it the Hell Out! Stop the cost shifting. Stop shortchanging readers. Stop treating hardworking employees like they’re disposable Call the publisher at 845 331 5000 x 534 . Visit kingstonnewspaperguild.org for more info.”

On Monday Oct. 31, Halloween, employees will return to Hurley Avenue. This time, at 5:15, they will be in front of the Daily Freeman to greet passing motorists with candy and flyers.

The Daily Freeman’s wage offer has consisted of little more than a percent for senior employees and no improvement beyond wages agreed to in 2001 for those anywhere below the top of the scale.

Amidst record-high gasoline prices, both before and after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and an Internal Revenue Service adjustment to its reimbursement rate for the fourth quarter of 2005, the Daily Freeman has held fast to a mere one-cent increase to mileage reimbursement rates not increased since the 1990s These are trapped well below 30 cents a mile during a period when the company’s own profits are increasing at a record pace.

To further boost the company's bottom line, the Daily Freeman’s health care proposal would shift more of the cost of coverage to employees in the form of higher drug and office co-pays, higher deductibles, and antifamily measures such as newly imposed charges for maternity and related care.

The Daily Freeman now publishes the Spanish-language “Las Noticias,” and has resisted paying any of the spanish-speaking staff who produce it any additional money for translation work. Company representatives have compared the knowledge of an entire language and culture to understanding the game of basketball.

The combined impact of little or no improvement to wages, an insulting proposal on reimbursements and higher, more costly-to-use health insurance, ensures the hard working employees of the Daily Freeman will do worse and worse financially in subsequent years of such a contract.

Please join us at 79 Hurley Avenue on Oct. 31, and urge the Daily Freeman to stop treating employees like they’re disposable. Write to: Publisher, Daily Freeman 79 Hurley Ave., Kingston, NY 12401. Email publisher@freemanonline.com and please copy info@kingstonnewspaperguild.org.

The Daily Freeman is a daily newspaper with circulation centered in a four-county area approximately 90 miles north of New York City.

For more information, visit www.kingstonnewspaperguild.org.