The New Dehli Star Tribune?

The following circulated through the Star Tribune newsroom last Friday on its way to Gov. Pawlenty:

Dear Guild members,

You might be interested in this description of how Star Tribune management is treating our brothers and sisters in the Advertising Operations Department.

There will be more information on this soon.

Respectfully,
Unit officers

Dear Governor Pawlenty:
My name is Mike Blazek, I am the Business Representative for the Graphic
Communications Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Local 1-M. We represent a newly organized group of Art Directors, Production
Artists, and Designers at the Minneapolis Star Tribune Newspaper. For the
past two years we have been working at negotiating an inaugural contract for
these 32 men and women.

One hour before our negotiations this past Tuesday, April 10th, we were
blindsided by Helen Wainwright’s (VP of Human Resources and Labor
Management) annoncement that the Star is pursuing bids from three companies
to “outsource” this groups’ work to India, and that we would be doing
effects bargaining for the expected 25 jobs to be lost, starting in June of
this year.
This comes after several months of highly contested debate over jurisdiction
of this group’s work; affects ONLY the newly organized group, and takes
place in the immediate wake of New Ownership (from outside the state of
Minnesota) who has been in question as to what their plans are for the
Minneapolis newspaper.

This is not a “done deal” yet, but when your three options from the
publisher on the table are: Accept the company proposal as given, Give $500
000 in concessions to keep the jobs, or Bargain to legal impasse and have
the Publisher implement their proposal anyway, it becomes very obvious just
what this is and where this is going.
These people’s jobs are the more high end positions that our president has
insisited will be staying in this country. Now, here we are faced with the
threat of losing 25 more jobs from our state of Minnesota to the country of
India, and why? That is the real question here!

I am asking you on behalf of all the potentially affected employees of the
Minneapolis Star Tribune to investigate this matter and to do your utmost as
Governor to put a stop to this.
Governor Pawlenty, this is the Minneapolis Star Tribune……do you want it
to be the New Dehli Star Tribune?!
I am sending a copy of this letter to both Senators Coleman and Klobuchar in
the hopes that they may also be able to intervene and stop this dispicable
act.

Thank You for your attention to this most serious of matters,

Mike Blazek
Business Representative
Local 1-M
651-645-0833 ext 14