Oregonian asks staffers to scab at paper in Ohio

Reporters at the non-union Oregonian newspaper are being offered double salaries to help their parent company, the Newhouse-owned Advance Publications, Inc., in an effort to break a strike at the Vindicator newspaper in Youngstown, Ohio.

Members of the Youngstown Newspaper Guild have been on strike against the 70,000-circulation family-owned newspaper nicknamed “The Vindy,” since Nov.16.

In an e-mail he sent to the Oregonian staff, executive editor Peter Bhatia wrote, “We have been asked to see if there might be volunteers from here, willing to go to Youngstown and work ...Volunteers would continue to receive their Oregonian salaries as well as being paid by Youngstown ... I understand some may be uncomfortable with this sort of situation or with crossing a picket line, as I assume they would have to do. There is no pressure for anyone to go. It is completely voluntary.”

A similar e-mail was sent to staffers at the non-union Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans, which also is owned by Advance Publications.

The Oregonian e-mail was obtained by the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America (CWA) and provided to Portland’s Willamette Week and the Business Journal.

Under the headline “The Daily Scab,” Willamette Week reported that Oregonian employees who volunteered to work in Youngstown would receive their Oregonian salaries plus pay and expenses from the Vindicator.

A Youngstown Guild member said the struck paper would be paying its imported scabs up to $1,000 a week in wages and expenses but wouldn’t pay its lowest-classification workers a living wage.

Willamette Week said top pre-strike pay for a Vindicator reporter was $713 a week, and called that less than half what the Oregonian pays its “top talent.” The Oregonian pays high to discourage its workers from wanting to join a union. The Oregonian and Oregon Journal got rid of the unions in the 1959-65 management-provoked strike.

Advance Publications — which operates a coast-to-coast media empire — is owned by the billionaire Newhouse family of New York City. The corporate name stems from the first newspaper owned by family patriarch Samuel I. Newhouse the Elder — The Staten Island Advance. The island is a borough of New York City. Sam died a quarter-century ago and the billionaire bossmen now are his sons “Si” and Donald. They killed the Oregon Journal in 1982 — 21 years after Sam bought it. The sons are now well into their 70s.

The Newhouse family owns several newspaper properties in Ohio, including the unionized Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The Vindy strike involves 171 union members and includes reporters, photo-graphers, copy editors, circulation district managers, delivery drivers and classified advertising sales people. Honoring the picket lines are 25 mailers represented by the Teamsters.

A report by the national office of The Newspaper Guild-CWA explained the strike in these words:

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.