Union Files Suit Against Press-Telegram

The Los Angeles Newspaper Guild has filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the owners of the Long Beach Press-Telegram of failing to honor the newspaper’s union contract.

The union also accuses Knight-Ridder Inc., which is selling the newspaper to Denver media magnate William Dean Singleton, and Press-Telegram Publications of trying to raid the employees’ pension plan.

The lawsuit, filed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, doesn’t name Singleton or Garden State Newspapers Inc., the affiliate of his Denver-based MediaNews Group that is buying the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Miami-based Knight-Ridder declined to comment on the lawsuit. Singleton also declined to comment, saying “that is an issue between the Newspaper Guild and Knight-Ridder.�

Knight-Ridder said last month that Garden State would buy the 100-year-old newspaper for an undisclosed purchase price. Singleton already owns the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Whittier Daily News and is rumored to be interested in buying the Los Angeles Daily News.

Singleton told the 450 Press-Telegram employees, including the 180 represented by the Guild, that they must interview for their jobs. Not everyone will be rehired and the salaries of those who are hired will be examined, he said.

The lawsuit alleges that Knight-Ridder’s sale of the newspaper without requiring Garden State to assume the Guild’s labor contract violates the successorship language of the contract. The contract states that the agreement will be binding upon any successors to the publisher who signed the contract. The contract was signed earlier this year.

An arbitration hearing on the successorship language is set for Tuesday, but the union filed suit to protect itself should the sale close before a decision is reached, said Natalie Shore, a reporter at the Press-Telegram and chairwoman of the newspaper’s Guild unit.

Knight-Ridder and Singleton have not revealed when the deal will close, and the Guild is prepared to seek a temporary restraining order to halt the sale, she said.

“We have successor language and we think it means something,� Shore said. “We could be looking at pay cuts, job losses, loss of seniority, loss of vacation--everything that we live by in this contract could be wiped out.�

The suit also accuses Knight-Ridder of breaching its fiduciary duties to nearly 450 future and current retirees by attempting to claim half of an approximately $6- million surplus in the employees’ pension plan.