The Sun-Times is now not only taking the position that it wants exclusive jurisdiction over Guild jobs, but are now actually moving Guild activists out of the bargaining unit. In a letter to the Company dated January 31, 2013, the Guild’s Executive Director Craig Rosenbaum wrote to the Company:

“The Guild is in utter astonishment that the Sun Times management initiated the removal of three […..] writers from our bargaining unit without a solitary word of discussion with us. In our view, this constitutes a unilateral and impermissible alteration of our bargaining unit in blatant violation of the National Labor Relations Act. As if that wasn’t offensive enough, the employees were all strong Guild activists, one of them an officer of the local and a key leader in our ongoing contract negotiations. It’s difficult to remember a more unabashed assault on employee Section 7 rights and, indeed, on the collective bargaining process itself.

The only potentially constructive part of this obviously and hastily executed move was that it laid to rest any lingering illusion that there is some sort of meaningful firewall between Sun-Times Media, LLC and Wrapports.

We are in the process of preparing an Unfair Labor Practice charge to be filed with the National Labor Relations Board. We believe the company’s actions constitute a violation of Sections 8(a)(1), 8(a)(3) and 8(a)(5) of the Act. Since we have not had an opportunity to formally discuss this matter with you: we will hold off on filing the charge until we meet and discuss the matter. Since we have a bargaining session scheduled for Thursday, February 7, I suggest we take this matter up at the start of that meeting.”

The next bargaining session will take place at the office of the Chicago Newspaper Guild located at 222 North LaSalle Street, Ste. 400 Thursday, on February 7 at 9:30 a.m. Any member of the Chicago Newspaper Guild is encouraged to be present. Please RSVP to the Guild no later than 4:00 p.m.  on Wednesday, February 6.