Newspaper union pickets in Portland

PORTLAND – Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram workers unhappy with a contract offer staged an informational picket Wednesday.

About half of Local 128 of Portland Newspaper Guild’s 300 members circled the building across from City Hall carrying signs reading “Talk is cheap – give us a fair contract” and “Put your profits where your contract is.”

Management hopes to resolve the dispute soon, said Ted O’Meara, spokesman for Blethen Maine Newspapers.

“We’re not going to negotiate the contract in the media or on the sidewalk or anywhere but at the bargaining table,” he said.

Workers received their last raise in November 1997, and have gone nearly two years without a contract.

The newspapers are owned by The Seattle Times Co., whose Blethen Maine Newspapers division also owns the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, the Morning Sentinel of Waterville and the weekly Coastal Journal in Bath.

Traditional collective bargaining has produced little progress, though both sides were expected to talk again Wednesday, said Ed Murphy, vice president of the union chapter and a business writer at the papers.

“People are very angry here,” he said. “They’re asking us to give up nearly everything.”