CWA Applauds Advertiser's Protest Over Newspaper Offshoring

In an unusual protest by a businessman on behalf of workers, a St. Louis car dealer has temporarily pulled his ads from the Post-Dispatch because he's angry that the newspaper is sending advertising typesetting jobs to India – work now done by CWA-represented printers.

Dave Sinclair told the city's alternative newspaper, Riverfront Times, that he's cancelled all ads for the next four to five weeks. "It's going to cost them $25,000 to $30,000,"  he said. "I'm not trying to be a rabble-rouser, but I wanted to make my point clear. Here we are talking about jobless rates in the United States and they're shipping jobs overseas."

Six printers are being laid off now and another six are expected to be laid off by December when more typesetting work will be sent to India, said Kevin Kujawa, president of CWA Local 6300. Although the printers' contract can't stop the company from moving the jobs, he said the local is negotiating severance packages for the laid-off members and possible job retraining funds.

"Dave Sinclair is one of the area's biggest car dealers and he promotes 'Buy American' in all his advertising," Kujawa said. "It's great to see him back up his words with action."

CWA Printing Sector President Bill Boarman applauded Sinclair. "This car dealer gets it," he said. "Who is going to buy his cars if we keep sending American jobs overseas? It is a shame that more advertisers don't understand this fundamental."

The typesetters aren't the only CWA workers losing their jobs at the Post-Dispatch. In late September, 17 members of The Newspaper Guild-CWA Local 36047 were laid off, several with at least 25 years of service. The union is filing a grievance over the paper's violation of a seniority provision in the Guild contract.

The Guild and management had started early bargaining at the time of the layoffs, but the union stopped when it learned what the company planned to do. Negotiators told management that "we weren't going to sit at the bargaining table with the company and talk about a contract when they were walking our people out the door," said Shannon Duffy, the local's business representative.

Duffy said both the Guild and the company had begun to show some willingness to move in bargaining and the union had hopes of reaching an agreement. The current contract expires next June.

"The only reason we went into bargaining this early was to get job security, so there was no point in going forward if they were going to whack our people," he said.