Teamsters Agree To Contract, At Last, With New Newspaper Owners
The last holdout among 16 unions -- the Teamsters drivers who deliver newspapers -- have ratified a contract with the new owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, in advance of Friday's close on its purchase.
Teamsters lived to fight another day each time they rejected previous contract offers, but the first two times it threatened to collapse the entire deal.
In effect, after a 20-month battle in bankruptcy court, including a marathon auction last April in New York, the papers had to go back for a re-do auction last month in Philadelphia because the successful bidder did not secure agreements with all of the unions.
But under the bankruptcy rules for the second auction, the chief executive officer of the new media company, Greg Osberg, had maintained they could have imposed new contract terms on the drivers. This third time around, though, Teamsters members voted 148-15 to approve an agreement.
The company had previously committed to honor the agreements it reached with the other 15 company unions.
Reported by Steve Tawa, KYW Newsradio.
