Cracks may be developing in the relatively smooth conversion of slumping Tribune Co. ? which owns The Sun, six other major newspapers and 23 broadcast television stations ? into the employee-owned media juggernaut that the going-private marriage was supposed to unleash.
“We?re in the process of getting arbitration dates,” said Sun reporter and Baltimore-Washington Newspaper Guild President Bill Salganik about a contract dispute with the new company ? one of several recent wrinkles in Tribune Co.?s transition.
The $8.2 billion leveraged buyout hit the ground running in 2008 with billionaire turnaround specialist and new company Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Zell issuing unconventional employee guidelines, conducting pep rally-like tours of company properties and decrying preconversion company management.
But it soon raninto headwinds in the form of the high-profile, cost-cutting-related resignation of Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times Editor James E. O?Shea and union discontent at Newsday and The Sun.
“We do expect Sam Zell to be coming to Baltimore to visit us [in early March],” said Sun spokeswoman Linda Yurche. “We will have meetings for him to meet with employees just as he?s doing at all of these other Tribune properties.”
There Zell may have to confront employee complaints about the disputed health plan provision, which requires employees who smoke to add $100 to their monthly contribution.
“They?re saying it?s a fee and not a premium, and so we can do this,” Salganik said of Tribune Co.?s position on a contract point that limits health plan premium increases. “But since it?s a monthly fee paid by the member which goes to pay claims, we?re saying its part of premium.”
Denis Taylor, president of the Teamsters local that represents 200 pressmen, drivers and mailers at The Sun, said that his members also opposed the health plan?s smoking provision, but ? unlike his counterpart at Newsday, which objects to perceived disparities in union and nonunion retirement plans ? his members had no problem with their retirement plan.
Tribune purchases
» Tribune Co., which owns The Sun, last week announced it would purchase real estate currently leased from Times Mirror Chandler Trusts LLC, including The Sun?s headquarters on North Calvert Street and its printing plant in South Baltimore.
» The company will also purchase properties used by the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Hartford Courant.
» Tribune Co. received an option to purchase the real estate for $175 million through the 2006 restructuring of TMCT. The sale is expected to close in April.
» “The TMCT option will help us eliminate rent payments in several key markets,” Sam Zell, Tribune?s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
