Minutes of the

56th Annual
North American Newspaper
Conference
May 20 - 22, 2013
Chaparral Suites,
Scottsdale, Arizona
Monday, May 20, 2013
Scottsdale, Arizona
[Start of recorded minutes]
Pres. Inemer:Conference call. Sergeant at Arms are we ready back there? Sorry for
the delay but we have had some audio issues this morning. Good morning all...Id like
to welcome you all to the 56th North American Newspaper Conference (NANC). Please
stand for the Pledge of Allegiance [audience takes pledge]. Please remain standing for
Tom Donnelly from Canadian Local to sing OCanada. [applause]
Tom Donnelly: Good morning Brothers and Sisters [ singing of National Anthem]
[applause]
Laura Wanless: Why ant we sing our anthem?
Pres. Inemer: It was decided to take Pledge as a lot of people have difculty singing
that song. We can sing it tomorrow if you would like...[applause] At this time I would like
recognize George Tedeschi President GCC/IBT, Richard Whitworth, Bob Lacey, Mike
Huggins, Rick Putnam, John Agenbroad, Bill Burrish retiree, Fred Brunning, Gary
Foreman General Board, Eddie Williams S. Region, Denis Fournier Canadian Rep and
if Ive missed anyone please let me know.
Id like to introduce Marty Callaghan to do the E-Board report from meetings held over
the past 2 days. Marty..
Marty Callaghan: Well i dont know that Im going to give an E-Board report so we
discussed two major By-law changes that we consider major changes that will be
coming forward from the E-Board to By-law and Finance committees depending on how
Joe choses to do it. The rst being an increase in per capita. The industry is in trouble
and we hear it in our Local reports. Locals are shrinking in numbers, reducing
membership and Locals arent sending as many delegates. We know per capita
increases are difcult but we need to increase funding. Per capita is at $1.25 now per
member and E-Board propose an increase of 50 cents to bring it up to $1.75 per
member. We choose not to address the maximum. With modest increase this will allow
us to function as a Conference.
Ill also tell you that the Conference is also taking steps to modify slightly how we do
minutes. The By-laws call for transcription of minutes and that they be made available
to the membership, there is no specic provision to have them mailed or printed in
anyway. Printing is one issue but the more difcult issue is the transporting of the
printed minutes, it is very expensive to have them shipped and we cant carry them out
here with us. The E-Board will try to contain costs by continuing to have minutes
transcribed and we will send them out via e-mail to Locals and have a few printed
copies so that if people want them they can have them but the idea of having 100 a long
with a modest dues increase, we havent had one in years, I cant remember the last we
had one, from $1.25 to $1.75 to afliate with the Conference.
Another By-law change that will be coming forward and we will be having some
speakers on the memory of Frank Mailander who passed away after the Conference
last year. Frank was a Stereotyper VP for this Conference for many many years and
with his untimely passing, and the sign of time we are going to propose eliminating the
Stereotyper VP position from the E-Board...so I know that Brother Heffernan and the
Brothers from 2N/1SE will have a lot to say about the passing of Frank but that is the
recommendation that will be coming from the E-Board.
So I want you to know we spent quite a bit of time working on this, its very difcult to
continue to host these Conferences and to do what we need to do to come together
especially in these difcult times of shrinking Unions. We have a number of people now
who pay their own way to come here and use their own money because they need the
information that we learn from each other and thats the true value of these
Conferences. Ive been coming for over 20 years and its the conversation you have
with the delegates, the delegates reports thats the value, especially for the new
delegates who can take it back to the shops. So its our hope at the E-Board that the
committees and membership approve these changes so that we can continue to have
successful and worthwhile Conferences and I appreciate you taking the time to listen to
us....thank you very much [applause]
Pres. Inemer: We did spend a lot of time on this. At this time I would like to bring up to
the podium the host Local for this Conference the same Local as last year Local 2N/
1SE out of New York President my friend John Heffernan [applause]
John Heffernan L2N/1SE: Thank you Joe. Welcome to the Conference. First of all I
wanted to say this looks great Im looking out here and I see everybody, you know this
is beautiful. Special thanks to all the Locals that helped us. New York put their name on
the bill and made the arrangements, some not so well but we made up for them at the
last minute but without your help we couldnt host it. I would like to thank all the Locals
that where generous to us, taking out ads in the journal and when you read your
journals you will see on the back page a Thank You page for everybody who helped us
out. Like Marty, this is 21-22 years Ive been coming to this Conference and its beautiful
to look out and see our friends, see people that have taught us, I see Rich and all you
guys who adopted us and kept us out of trouble....I mean a little bit [laughter]. Things
that go on here are invaluable and the information, contacts, brotherhood, camaraderie
and strategies. We learn something new every time we come here, I wish we had the
means to take our members once in a while, different members so that they can go
back to their Locals and tell everybody what the hell is going on the real world because
some members still live in a bubble and dont understand the crisis we are in but I do
believe theres hope for us all and I think we are going to survive. I really believe that in
my heart. There will be a newspaper, well have a contract, we will probably plateau
somewhere but there will have to be a newspaper and there will always be printing. You
know...there will always be a Local [inaudible] and be proud to be a member.
I wanted to mention about Frank, I mean Frank Mailander what can you say about
Frank, Frank Mailander is of a different breed of men we wont see again. When you
lose someone like Frank, he will never be replace how are you going to replace a
person like this. A few highlights just to let you know Frank was a Stereotyper President
when we merged, I always viewed Frank as Stereotyper President, how could Frank be
my VP when Frank had more experience in the tip of his nger than I have, but you
know some of the things he accomplished were he negotiated Lifetime Medical Benets
for the people at the New York Times and if anyone could put a price on that Lifetime
Medical Benets each year as the benets cost more the Publisher would have to pay
more. Frank negotiated manning for the Stereotypers and when we merged we
managed to preserve that up to 2017. We still have Stereotypers and manning on
those machines and thats largely in part to Frank. Franks personality, they knew they
couldnt pull certain things, he would light up that cigar and sit back in the chair and look
at them and say nuts and that was Frank Mailander and he was great. The last day we
were all together he collected the 50/50 monies he went to give me the money but I told
him to hold onto it as always lose things, hold on to it until you see Rich Daley and he
said okay Ill see you next week at the E-Board and then he was gone........I think thats
another example of how lifes to short and that you never know... So while were here
today we should love and respect each other and with the grace of God well all be back
here again next year and lets keep this North American Newspaper Conference strong
and lets stay together. Thank You. [applause]
Mike Laspina L406C Nassau County: Motion for moment of silence for Frank
Mailander
Pres. Inemer: Please stand for a moment of silence for fallen Brother Frank Mailander
Thank you. Also as a point of personal privilege I would like Chris Lang of Pittsburgh
L24M to say afew words.
Chris Lang L24M Pittsburgh: Lou [inaudible] ex President passed away just before
Easter of spinal cancer. For those of you who knew Lou he was a huge guy when he
passed he was 135lbs and you wouldnt of recognized him. Just wanted to let you know,
thanks.
Pres.Inemer: Thanks Chris, Some of the older members of the Conference would
remember Lou. We have two members from DC2 here and its their rst conference as
aguest and we hope to have them with us next year as delegates: Matt Larsen 28N and
Steve Ryan 543N Omaha. Were also pleased to see CEP delegates Peter McQuaid
CEP 2000 Vancouver and John Webster CEP191 Winnipeg, great to have you back.
Reading of the minutes...Motion to accept? Moved Judy Diamond L100M Toronto
second Ron Pineda L140N Los Angeles. Thank you.
Lou Nocosia L406C: Point of order, please state your name and Local for the
transcribing of minutes.
Pres.Inemer: Kevin, any communications at this time?
Kevin Toomey: None at this time.
Pres.Inemer: At this time I would like to bring Matt Wenner up here he represents the
ERF Fund better known as the West Coast Plan, thank you Matt.
Matt Wenner: Its early, good morning..heck of a way to start. I know you have a lot to
get to so Im going to try to keep this brief. I will be around the rest of the day. One of
the things that is really good is not so much the coming up to speak to you but the ability
to get around and discuss with you individually about whats going on in your Locals and
if you have anything that we can do for you. I would just like to start out by saying the
GCIU Employer Retirement Fund had a very good year last year and year end
December 2012 the funds investment return was 13% net of investment fees, actually
that number will be nished as we go forward it doesnt include some of the private
equities and real estate numbers that always lag in coming in but its 13% plus for the
year. The Investment Consultant for the Fund uses a service to put together investment
performance numbers that company is Investor Force and they work with a number of
plans and groups across the country. To do that work for investment performance they
put together universals of like things and in this case they have put together universal
Taff-Tartley plans that they do the performance measurement for the investment return,
this fund was in the top 10% for the year end of December 2012. It was in the top 1%
for the last 3 years and top 16% for last 5 years. For 2011, although the investment
return for 2011 as Ive told you on an absolute basis and I kind of told you this before as
well as on a relative basis this plan is doing very very well on its investment
performance on an absolute basis years were it returns 4.89% even though that puts it
in the top1% of all plans and it was 300% better than the investment return for the State
of California. Calpers which has always been looked on as one of the premier
investment funds in the country. The fund continues to be in critical status at this point
and so one of the other things just to let you know we did send out notice of critical
status for 2013, we distributed those to all of you in April. Beginning 2008 the plan
Actuary was required to annually certify to the Secretary Treasurer of the plan and
Board of Trustees if the plan is in danger of critical status, that was the rst year it was
required. Required to do that in 2008 and going forward the plan was not in critical
status in 2008 but after the investment year of 2008 by 2009 it was critical and so we
sent out notices to you in April 2013. We also sent out annual funding notices for the
plan including information about funding status of the Fund and general information
about benet payments that are guaranteed through the PBGC and the plan funding
status....again we send those notices out every year we did that in conjunction with the
notice of critical status and those went out in April also.
The investment performance so far for this year is also very good for the rst quarter,
the investment performance is very close to 5% again that doesnt include some of the
lagging numbers which we know to be a positive also for some of the real estate and
private equity and of course so far April and May continue to be very good investment
performance as well. The fund over time has done what it really set out to do I think
and that was to provide for retirement and security for its members. Going forward its
going to become increasingly difcult with the funding status of the fund but just to give
you an idea of the history of the plan it has taken in about 915,000,000 dollars in
contributions and has paid out over 2 billion. Now as of third quarter paid out 2 billion in
benets and so very good history. There are a number of things that are very different
for the fund right now, the state of the industry...I mean the things that the Trustees can
control, they are the investments they can make they cant control the markets they also
cant control what happens in the industry which is very much reected in the
participation and what happens in the plan as the plant closures continue and the
industry shrinks so does the active participation in the fund and one of the more difcult
things for the fund that is under funded is that there is fundable liability....what that is
that plants that close, that withdraw from the fund are liable for the proportionate share
of the under funding and that all goes to the funding for the plan going forward. We
have been very successful in working to collect that withdrawal liability and one of the
difcult things is that it also attaches to participating Locals that participate in the fund
so just like any employer if any Local were to withdraw that withdrawal liability and
proportionate amount goes as well. The fund, the Trustees there is no way to
discriminate against on employer versus another.
The answer to a lot of this stuff as we go forward is not always easy, my ofce, my staff
works very hard to try and answer all the questions that we can for you, as you go
through any withdrawals. A lot of the answers you get from us now are in conjunction
with discussions with the plans Attorneys and Actuaries. We know that not boycotting
some of the very difcult jobs that you all have and I admire the work that you do and
who would think that for the Newspaper Conference ....to see it shrinking and to know
what it has been....its tough but our ofce is there to help, please feel free to contact us
with any questions you have. Ill leave at that ...having said that Ill be around for the
rest of the day and a little bit tomorrow Id be happy to answer any questions I can for
you OK [applause]
Pres. Joe Inemer:Thank you Matt. If anybody has any questions for Matt......this is for
you Matt.. before I came out here I was visiting one of my shops and a member came
up to me and he is a member of the ERF and asked a question, Ive never heard this
one before ...the gentleman retires and he wants to take joint and survivor option and a
couple of years after retirement his wife passed away and then about a year later he re-
married, the question was would that spouse be eligible should he die? Is that a good
question? I dont know.
Matt Wenner: The new spouse would not be eligible, the joint survivor benet
guarantees the lives of two people being the participant and his current wife when he
retires. It would be nice but the benet does not attach to the new spouse going
forward. Anything else? if not thanks. [applause]
Joe Inemer: Thank you Matt. At this time I would like to bring up guest from
Washington Local 1C, Howard Brown. Howard is here with his Board members and
they are having their e-board meeting here after todays meeting. Howard is a very
interesting person along with his group, we print newspapers they print US currency!
One person I talked to last night prints $100 bills, 100 million for his 8hr shift imagine if
he ever took a night off[laughter]. Howard like to come up and address members,
Howard come on up [applause]. On a side note Howard and I served on the same ship
for a couple of years and I never ran into him [laughter].
Howard Brown: First of all I would like to say thanks for inviting me here as a guest at
the Conference and to follow up Joe and Is Navy time together Joe wanted to be with
the submarines but they found out he liked to sleep with the windows open, so it just
didnt go over well [laughter]. Let me start off with a bit of history of Local 1C we were
rst organized in1873 and no I wasnt an apprentice at that time [laughter].It was
founded CPU printing ofce Abraham Lincoln established that agency.
With me today I have Ofcers from Texas and DC who represent Mississippi and the
rst question I get from people is how can you do that? or I dont understand that. Well
it is like this we were rst established in Washington DC our base is Washington but as
growth expansion they opened up satellite plants in Mississippi and Fort Worth, Texas
and thats how we became spanned out across country. We are expanding constantly
with members and our product that we service thru out the country. In the horizon and
its law now the concept mandated by Congress the next generation of currency will
have a feature in it were the blind can read/feel the denomination of what it is whether
its a 5,10 or whatever case maybe and there are countries who already have that
feature and the US will soon have that as well. And with that hopefully well grow by 60
-70% of our membership within the next few years. I would like to introduce the E-board
thats here today as guests and if I could take some of your time and have them
describe in brief some of the services they provide to this country. Gerry if you will,
Robert if you will...
Norman [inaudible] Local 1C Washington, DC. Just a brief overview of what we do, we
dont print money! We print the Federal roster, Congressional Record which has to be
out by 5am every night, passports, travel cards, expanded to ID card design to help
different FAs come up with secured documents so that you can process in and out
quickly. We print any Federal documents, forms, letterheads, proclamations, you name
it we have it. The problem we do have in common with you all is we have roll presses
too. Presses used to do Congressional Record and for the record we used to do 10,000
copies per night and have them out by 5am and we would deliver to Congress and
different libraries, during decline we went from 10,000 to 4,000 and sometimes less than
that and its because of the old school Congressmen are not accustomed to Ipads so
they like their paper copy in hand to read. So we are here to bounce ideas off you guys
to try to slowdown whats going on. We are listening to you guys ideas and taking them
back to our shops and try to save jobs. Thanks, [applause].
Gerry Hanson: VP Local 1C Fort Worth, Texas. Western Currency Facility. Our primary
job is to produce the most secure currency in the world, in condence not only in our
economy but across the world. For those of you who do not know that the US dollar is
accepted widely in more countries than any other denomination. We even out perform
and have wider circulation than the Euro. When the Euro is in trouble the US dollar isnt
so then the economy turned 3 - 4 years ago the Euro got in trouble and we started to
produce more $100 bills to replace the Euros that where no longer holding because of
the condence that they have in our currency. Right now we are in the process of
working on a new design $100 bill which will be released in October. It has unique
features which made it rather difcult to print if any of you have never seen the bill you
can go online @ www.moneyfactory.gov. Look under next years currency and you can
see that $100 bill and explains some of the features. Very complicated bill to produce
where our $1 and $5 presses would normally produce 40,000 sheets of currency per
night we are lucky to produce 19-23,000 sheets of these $100 bills per night because of
the complexity of the currency and 3D strips and some other things in it.
The Western Currency Facility opened in 1990 it was a situation where Jim Wright and
Ross Perrault got together and decided they wanted this bid for the new plant because
after the airplane crash into 14th St. bridges the people in Washington,DC got worried
that if something happened to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington,DC
they wouldnt have anywhere to produce currency. They went out for a search on where
to build a plant and Ross Perrault got together with the Mayor of Fort Worth and they
donated the 100 acres of land to build the original building, the building has been
expanded four times, the building is now 755,000 square feet and we produce 67.8% of
US currency. When the initial concept came we were only going to produce 20% of the
currency, we produce more now in Fort Worth than we produce in Washington, DC. Its a
unique place if youve ever been there, come out to Fort Worth and visit, tours are free
all you have to do is leave guns, knives and cell phones in your cars! theyll take you in
and show you everything we do in there. The tour takes about 45 minutes. They have
the same thing in Washington, DC. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing and
Fort Worth are the #1 tourist attractions in these particular areas. We started out with
12 pressmen in DC and in Fort Worth I have 107. In Fort Worth now we do 3 steps in
process of printing the currency we do offset color, we do numbering series, cutting and
packaging and we also running a new piece of equipment called LEAP this particular
piece of equipment they call it LEAP we call it supercoat. It produces a completely
separate sheet as its own special system this basically replaces the mechanical exam
section that inspects the currency and theyre putting it all on this supercoat and
packaging and shipping to the Federal Reserve. The folks at the Federal Reserve
normally did this by hand but now are being replaced by equipment. So even though our
numbers are growing some Bureaus are contracting. Fort Worth and Washington do
$1, but $@, $5, $10, $20 and $100s are the biggest denominations. We so 8.7 billion
notes per year. If you see it on the news about us producing more money, its all an
announcement Gold Standard what you hear is giving you all nonsense because we
produce 8.7 billion all the time. One thing we do need your help with is the move on
board to introduce $1 coins and do away with the $1 bill. Canada did this a long time
ago, we get hit with that on a regular basis. Canada was mandated. 46% of the jobs of
people producing the $1 bills so if they bring in the $1 coin we will lose 46% of the
people. Every $1 bill is produced on re useable resource. Cotton linen is grown 41
coins is produced by strip mining and once you start strip mining across the country you
can never put it back together. You can always grow more cotton or linen! So with all
due respect to your Congressmen we would like you to back and tell them you would
like to keep the $1 bill. If you should ever go on USA.web and see a notice for a
pressman at the B of E&P by all means put in for it, Ive worked here for 19 years and
theyve been good. I retire December, its the best paid worst job I ever had. They pay
you good but you have to do the same thing over and over. Whether you put it in your
pocket, a machine or just spend it some place, someone will take it! Thanks [applause].
Howard Brown: Roger, Wayne and Charlie please stand up, I would like to introduce
the Ofcers of Local 1C [applause]. Roger please go to the mic
Roger Finley: At my request the E-Board approved and went ahead and bought an
uncut and uncirculated sheet of 32 $1 bills to donate to this Conference. Its tangible
currency and could be cut up and spent [applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you [applause]. John, the consensus is to rafe it off over the next
few days. $100 next! Speaking of currency and money its an appropriate time to
introduce Secretary/Treasurer Bob Lacey, come on up Bob [applause].
Bob Lacey: Good morning everyone, Id like to thank the Ofcers and Delegates for
allowing me the time to address you this morning. Also I would like to recognize and
welcome the brothers and sisters from our former locals who are now CEP...welcome
[applause], and I am truly hopeful that the day will come when we can unite again and
Im sure it will. This is the third GCC Conference that I have attended in 3 weeks so I
apologize to some of you who will be hearing this for the third time. I would like to
spend a few minutes talking about contract negotiations as it relates to coordinated
bargaining and organizing. As the Secretary/Treasurer and V.P. I do hit the road and
assist in contract negotiations primarily with some of the larger employers and probably
spend most of the time with the larger employer known as Consolidated Graphics or
CGX. The GCC represents about 12 locations of CGXs 75 locations across the U.S.
they also have locations in Canada and some in Japan and also locations oversees. We
have several large employers over segments of our industry and of those large
employers they have multiple locations some of those locations are represented by
GCC locals as well as CEP locals. I bring this up for two reasons it is imperative where
we coordinate bargaining with large employers and we organize the none union
locations of the same employer our Local in Pittsburgh knows what is going in with our
Local in Indianapolis. If we get an increase or improvement in Pittsburgh then we expect
to get the same in Indianapolis. Likewise if there are concessions made in a location
the other location needs to know whats going on in concessionary bargaining so that we
dont give more than the other location and end up in a rip sawing effect where one
location is chasing the other one. The only way to properly represent our members and
maintain our standards is to coordinate and when I look across this room I know that
most of you are in the newspaper industry but the Locals who are representing our
newspapers also represent commercial shops and the same is true in the newspaper
industry the need and you must coordinate with others so you know whats going on.
With respect to the non represented locations with the same employer we must make
an effort to organize these locations and its simple philosophy we need to increase our
density within that employer so as to increase our bargaining power or strength at the
table. I urge all of you to reach out to Locals who have a common employer to make an
attempt to coordinate whats going on in various cities within the same employer and if
you need some assistance dont hesitate to call on me and I will assist in that matter. Im
pleased to report that I have just returned from Cincinnati, Ohio after a seven year
struggle with a CGX location members of Local 508 DC 3 have ratied contracts there,
the members have been working under implemented conditions since 2009 and it is
rare to have a situation where a group of members working under implemented
conditions for so long where there is a happy ending so Im very happy to report on that
[applause]. Just a minute or two more on Consolidated Graphics better known as CGX,
CGX when CGX acquires a company they will allow that company to maintain its name
so most of you havent heard of Consolidated Graphics unless you have a location
which you represent, so when they acquire a company they allow that company to keep
its name, CGX is the largest sheet fed company in the U.S. now I say that and some are
saying WOW! Ive never heard of CGX theyre the largest sheet fed printing company.
They also have extensive web and digital printing capabilities and if I may digress for a
second, on digital printing I hope that the GCC doesnt make the same mistake that it
made some years ago with respect to desktop publishing digital printing is here we cant
shun it, we cant pretend that it does not exist and we cant pretend that it is going to go
away, we need to embrace it and we need to represent it. So back to CGX you most
likely have a CGX location in your backyard I would urge all of you when you return
home to get on the internet and google Consolidated Graphics and it will bring you up a
map showing all of its locations and you may be surprised that you have a CGX facility
right in the jurisdiction of your Local so the reason Im bringing that up is because we
need to increase our density within the CGX chain as I mentioned earlier having only 12
of the 75 locations represented is not good and as I look around this room I see several
Locals that have a CGX location, so anyway we need to nd out where those other
locations are and I need you to Help me and the other Locals in organizing those
locations and increasing our density within CGX. While Im spending sometime on CGX
the same holds true with the other several large employers within our industry whether
its newspaper, packaging or whatever we need to increase our density. Spend a couple
of minutes just updating you on the Conference, its somewhat old news by now but for
those of you who dont know that all of the GCC operations have moved to the IBT
headquarters as of December 21st it is good to have everyone under the same roof now
George, Rich and I can meet together daily when were in Washington and have daily
briengs as well as all the other departments we can now coordinate with one another it
is good to nally have everyone under one roof. The move will also save the
Conference additional monies while the IBT was paying our rent at 1900 Wall St. there
are several other economies to be realized as a result of the move as we no longer
have to rent the equipment, we dont have to pay for internet services, telephones
services and the list goes on so there are quite a bit of savings to be had and Im
working with the IBT on consolidating our insurance coverages so that we can
piggyback off the IBT in areas where we have to have our own coverages and then
consolidate coverages such as building and liability insurance so we will realize some
additional savings there. Ofcial directories where printed and distributed back in
February those of you who need additional copies of the directories just contact my
ofce and well send you some additional copies. The General Board met last in March,
March 20 and 21, you should have all received your minutes, just to recap some of the
things contained in the minutes, one being the membership count...just to add some
additional commentary on the membership count, the count that was included in the
minutes was for the period September 1st, 2012 thru December 31, 2012 a four month
period the active membership during that period fell by 765 members or a little over 2%,
thats a better number that we have seen for a number of years but it is still a negative
territory and we dont like to see this. The active membership count to December 31st is
35,684 breaking that down the U.S. membership was at 32,397 and the Canadian
membership 3,287. Fortunately since the beginning of the year we are not aware of any
additional major plant closing..that is good news. in 2011 and 2012 we incurred several
large plant closings were we were losing 300, 400 to 500 members at a whack and that
is hard to take but the good news is I am not aware of any additional plant closings and
I am hopeful that we will start seeing some stability and some growth. There is a key to
maintaining membership and unfortunately in the United States more and more states
are becoming Right to Work and one of those keys in maintaining membership and I
dont want to steal Brother Agenbroads thunder because I know John is going to make a
presentation on the Local pension fund but if you are in a Right to Work state or if you
believe that there is some threat your State may become Right to Work then I strongly
suggest that you get into the Local pension fund there is no better hook into your
membership than having your members participate in their own Local and an example is
in my home state of Indiana, Indiana is now in its second year of being a Right to Work
state and in two years time we have not lost one member in the state of Indiana as a
result of Right to Work and the reason is simple while all of us have members in our
Locals who arent very good members and it doesnt take much for them to jump ship
and the good news is they are a minority that if they are the participants in their own
Local pension fund I guarantee you they will not jump ship. So Im hoping the same
holds true in Michigan who would ever of thought that of all states Michigan would have
become a Right to Work, so Im hopeful that even though Michigan went Right to Work
most of our members in the state of Michigan are in the Local pension plan and again
that will be the hook and again I know John will be talking about the Local but those of
you who arent in the Local plan youre missing the boat if you reside in a state that you
think may never become Right to Work who would ever have thought that Michigan
would be Right to Work so again I would urge you to strongly consider the Local
pension plan. Just to touch base on numbers of the dedicated funds of the Conference
again this was as of December 31, 2012 these are net assets, the net assets of the trust
fund as of December 31 was slightly under 52 million. I dont want to make any
promises Benevolent Trust Fund is doing very well and Id like to think that it wont be to
much longer and that the Trustees might entertain some improvement in the death
benet for that fund which by the way is another hook between the [inaudible] and the
BNF those are to good hooks that members will not jump ship. As far as the newspaper
and the Emergency Defense Fund as of December 31 it is slightly under 600,000 at
593,189. The shining star of the Funds continues to be the Emergency or Special
Defense Fund at December 31 we were at 11,239,239 dollars and the return from
investments in 2012 was in excess of 1 million dollars which includes expenses of
312,000 so we have a net increase of 600,000 in that fund in 2012 and based on
favorable markets as you all know whats going on in 2013 we are very hopeful that the
Defense funds will do well very well if the economy continues to track as it has been in
the rst ve months of 2013. The nancial review of the Conference as I reported on to
the General Board in March is we are beginning to realize the positive results of
additional signicant reductions in expenses. If you recall at our Convention in 2011 the
Ofcers made a commitment to you to reduce expenses by 1 million dollars, I reported
at the General Board meeting that as of the March General Board meeting we had
already reduced expenses by 1.4 million dollars surpassing the commitment. I also
reported and I believe that we will see a reduction in expenses of 2 million dollars. Now
the only way to ensure the long term autonomy of the GCC as you know is to stabilize
and grow our membership while were doing our part on the Conference end on the
reducing expenses and we appreciate the delegates of the Conference stepping up to
the plate and approving Conference dues you can only tap so much so we must
stabilize and grow our membership, so I urge all of you to make organizing a top priority
and we can not be of the mind set that Im a Commercial Local or Im a Newspaper
Local if Im one then I dont want them and I dont want to deal with digital printing or I
dont want to deal with this, take whatever you can get and if its not in the printing
industry go after something else. The printing industry is not dead, some would already
have us buried I know weve already taken big hits especially in the newspaper industry
I would like to think that the newspaper industry has sort of hit bottom and I am
encouraged by some of the quotes I have read that there maybe a return to print
advertising, where the digital advertising isnt working that people dont really pay
attention to it that it ashes when you log on and google you see all this advertising
ashing on and off its not on long enough and people just dont pay attention to it and
they go where they want to go, so I am hearing reports that are suggesting that there
will be a return to print advertising. So again I beg to differ that the printing industry is
not dead and I believe that we will see some segments if they havent bottomed out I
think they will improve one segment of the industry that seems to be going like
gangbusters is our packaging side of the industry those of you who have packaging
operations we havent been hurt, in fact in down economies its the packaging industries
that are ourishing everybody buys medicine. When things are tough and you are not
eating out youre buying frozen dinners its packaging, so anyway we all need to make
organizing a priority. The General Board spent quite a bit of time talking about union
labels and the discussion was on the minimum requirements of the issuance of the
GCC/IBT union label and the General Board approved the reducing of the minimum
requirement for the issuance of the GCC/IBT union label. I included a notice in the
General Board minutes and another notice is going out on the 15 of this month which
was a few days a go announcing this change and the reason for the change we are
missing the boat we have the most stringent requirement of print labels out there and
we only recognize two, the Allied and the GCC but theres also the Typo label and we
have the most stringent requirement and that requirement was you have to have a
minimum of three two of which could not have any nancial interest in the company or
be related to the owner of the company. The new rule is simply a minimum of two GCC
represented employees. Ill say that again, the new rule is you must have a minimum of
two represented GCC employees. Those two could have nancial interest in the
company and could be related to the owner of the company or include the owner of the
company, so the new minimum is two. Any questions on that? Okay. There was not a
lot of activity on the Contingency Fund, there were a couple of mergers and transfers
approved. The voluntary administrative transfer to [inaudible]49C and to Kansas City
16C was approved and we rescinded the administrative transfer of Tulsa 226M into
Houston 4535 and the reason behind the rescinding is at the time of the transfer 226
didnt have any Ofcers or Leadership and the General Board decided to transfer
shortly after that transfer we were contacted the Local voted in new Ofcers and the
Local said give us a chance we want to y our own ag and the General Board
concurred with that and rescinded the transfer of 226. Last but not least the merger of
Hawaii 501 Tommy Simms local that merger into IBT 996 was approved pending the
approval of the GEB, and George I dont know whether the IBT/ GEB has approved that
yet. In closing I would again urge all of you upon returning to your Locals or District
Councils to make organizing a top priority while the Conference Ofcers and you the
leadership of your Local unions and District Councils make a commitment to preserve
the autonomy of this Conference it cannot be accomplished without the stability and the
long term grow of the membership. Contrary to the wishes of the right wing the
Republican Party and some of our employers we will never go away and we will not die.
Thank you. [applause]
Joe Inemer: Thank you Bob. You know being Secretary/Tres of a large local is not an
easy job balancing books and [inaudible] today Hats off. At this point Id like to bring
up our Secretary/Tres Kevin Toomey and Kevin is going to give out the assignments for
the committees, Kevin.
Kevin Toomey; I have the committee assignments and if anyone has any issues with
the assignments or committee theyre on or if they would like to serve on a different one
then I would appreciate if you would see me as soon as possible today so that I can
nalize this list for tomorrow also for any of our delegates in particular from Salt Lake
City and Omaha who arent seated as delegates but would like to sit on a committee
feel free to let me know which committee you would like to sit on and Id be more than
happy to accommodate you. Next year we hope to have you in the full members and
have you seated as delegates. First committee is the Audit Committee, By-laws
committee, Credentials Committee, Organizing Committee, and if I may I just saw Marty
Keegan come into the room, it is nice to see you Marty and if he would like to join the
Organizing Committee Id appreciate it. Newspaper Committee Id also ask Marty
Callaghan VP to join that committee if his busy schedule allows [laughter] and the tough
one the Thanks Committee. Thats all the committees I have, I do not have a safety and
substance abuse committee due to lack of interest. (See attached list of Committee
members).
Joe Inemer: Marty Keegan just walked in I didnt see him. I also failed to announce that
a former recording secretary for many years Frank Rak is here [applause]. I think at this
point you guys can talk it over get together with your committee groups and you can
meet today, you can meet here or I do have one room in the back later Washington 1C
is having an all day Executive Board meeting. Well take a break and then well have
nominations for Ofcers for the next two years.
Chris Lang 24M Pittsburgh: Anyone on the Credentials Committee meet me at the
back.
Joe Inemer: Next order of business is nominations for the Ofcers as you know we
have elections every year one half of the Ofcers in even years the others in odd
years.This being 2013 the Ofce of President, Sargent at Arms will be held and in
addition all the Regional Reps are up each year for the various sections of the Country
its been a recommendation that we eliminate the VP of Stereo Electroplate Local which
was held for many years by Frank Mailander being there is no more Stereotypers it
would be in our best interest to eliminate this position. In order to run you have to be a
delegate for this year the President and the Secretary Treasurer will be running as it is
an odd year its a 2 year term, Im sorry its the President and the Sargent at Arms I stand
corrected. With that well open up nominations for President then well do the Sargent
at Arms and the Regional Reps. Nomination for President?
Kevin Toomey Boston 3N : It gives me great pleasure to nominate Joe Inemer for re-
election of President NANC.
Marty Callaghan Boston 3N: Second.
Joe Inemer: Thank you, any other nominations for President... hearing none , last call
nomination for President ... nominations are closed thank you. Thanks. [applause] It
cant be done unless all of us get together and this is what its all about us getting
together, no one person can do this alone. The next ofce is the Sargent at Arms which
is also a two year term, any nominations for the Sargent at Arms?
Rick Montesano San Diego 432M: It is my pleasure to nominate for Sargent at Arms
Jamie McElravey.
Joe Inemer: Thank you, second?? Garry Foreman second. Any other nominations for
Sargent at Arms? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye [aye] all those
opposed...congratulations Jamie [applause]. Next year well have the Recording
Secretary and VP and the Secretary-Treasurer running for two year terms.
Garry Foreman Indianapolis 17M: Just a comment how come none of my elections
never run this smooth? [laughter]
Joe Inemer: As you the regional Reps are every year so Id like to open up nominations
for the Eastern Rep.
Mike Laspina Nassau County 406C: Id like to nominate Lou Nicosia
John Heffernan 2N NY: Second
Joe Inemer: Any other nominations for Eastern Rep? [Background discussion
inaudible] There is a bylaw change we changed the realignment if you look on your
bylaw book page, the East will actually have 2 Reps.
Kevin Toomey Boston 3N: Last year we passed a bylaw redening the demarkation
lines in the map because we had a hard time lling from certain areas of the country.
What it came down to was everything east was strongly comprised of the Midwest, the
Southern and the Eastern regions now designated as the Eastern region,three positions
in the East now, 2 Western Reps formerly made up of the Western Rep and the South
Western Rep and 1 from the domain of Canadian gives us a total number of six which
we had before but they are just named differently so instead of having East, Midwest
and South we have 3 Eastern Reps, instead of having Western and South West we
have 2 Western Reps so they can come from any area within those segments.[inaudible
audience noise]. Basically what it does is it takes away the designation ofMidwest Rep
and Southern Rep and they become Eastern Reps. Same people can run.[audience
noise]
Joe Inemer: Map on back page. Anything to the right of the line [audience noise]
correct, yes your right.
Laura Wanless 32N/ 568: I nominate Frank Golden Chicago 458M
Joe Inemer: Nomination Frank Golden. Second? Rich Daley 2N one more nomination
for the Eastern.
Rick Montesano San Diego 432M: For the other Eastern Rep Mike Heine
Joe Inemer: Nomination for Mike Heine second? Ron Pineda, any other nominations
for Eastern Rep...last call..hearing none then nominations are closed. Congratulations!
[applause] Now for the West, we now have two Reps for the West.
Rick Montesano San Diego 432M: Its a pleasure to nominate Ron Pineda
Joe Inemer: Ron Pineda second? Judy Diamond 1N Toronto We now need a second for
the West.
Kevin Toomey Boston 3N: Mr.Chairman I would like to nominate Rick Montesano for
Western Rep.
Joe Inemer: Rick Montesano second? Marty Callaghan 2N Boston Thats two are there
any other nominations? any other nominations? hearing none nominations are closed.
Congratulations![applause] We have one more nomination which is for the Canadian
Rep, nominations for one
Judy Diamond 1N Toronto: I would like to nominate Frank Mandarino for the Canadian
Rep
Joe Inemer: Frank Mandarino second? John Heffernan. Okay any other nominations,
any other nominations hearing none nominations are closed. Congratulations![applause]
Marty Callaghan would like to talk to you about the Angle Bar Club.
Marty Callaghan 2N: I would like to take some time out of my extremely busy schedule
to address you on the topic of the Angle Bar Club. The Angle Bar Club was established
many many years ago as a way to help fund the hospitality room, the annual dues for
the Angle Bar Club are ve dollars and we have the pins that are for sale for ve dollars,
we didnt order new ones as we werent sure exactly what the numbers were going to
be so I have a few left. Ive seen a lot of you already this morning but if you have the
opportunity stop by and join this prestigious organization Id appreciate if you would do
so to support the host local in keeping the hospitality room well stocked so if you get the
opportunity come and see me Ill be out tomorrow morning and this afternoon any
contributions are most welcome. Thank you.
[applause]
Joe Inemer: Thanks Marty. At this time all the Locals are free to come up and during
the course of this three day conference and give his or her local report. If anyone from
the locals would like to give their report please do so at this time. Please state your
name for the record.
John Heffernan NY 2N: Id like to give my report and I would like to urge all the
delegates to please give reports while we are here. I thinks its important that we share
this information, the Newspaper Committee report will be an overview of all individual
reports. Same plight across the whole country were all suffering but fortunately the
Local has been able to negotiate some good contracts and everybody is working and
thats the bottom line. It hasnt been easy as we reported last year in the Daily News we
went from 9 presses to 7 presses to 3 presses, at the New York Post we print the Wall
Street Journal and the Post so we are going full out there. At the New York Times which
keeps advertising Weekender, Weekender, Weekender hooking there digital to the print
promoting the digital. Circulation is decreasing dramatically, in the ve Boroughs of
New York City we only print 370,000 New York times a night and that number is an
incredible number if you only think about it, only nine years ago we printed 1.1 million
daily, 2 million on Sunday, 2 million for eight sections so 16 million a week for sections
and now our sections are down to approximately 600,000, Sunday edition
approximately 600,000 and our dailies are 360,000 in the Boroughs. What saves is
there is a double run daily and you guys are familiar with this because of how many
sections the Times wants so we print 360,000 twice so it lls up our dance card for the
night but if you think about it it is still only 360,000 papers. At the Daily News, Ill stay on
the Times for the moment, the Times is a big cash cow for the Union as a lot of our
contributions to our Local, our pension fund come from the New York Times its like a
mother ship so to speak but I think they are failing, failing in the idea of printing other
products, theyve been making overtures to me in the last several months that theyve
got to print commercial stuff, I think that they are the last person to the dance because
the Daily News and ourselves have made a covalence that brought us a tremendous
amount of commercial work. The New York Post has printed community newspapers for
many years now and now the Times is making a half assed gesture that they may want
to use some of their press time.We have seven presses that during the week we are
only printing twice on the dayside on the New York Time and at night time we are using
ve machines, its a dramatic drop off over there but again we have guarantees, we
have contracts and my contracts are good until 2017, we have raises in place to 2017
but Ladies and Gentleman this is 2013 you blink your eye and well be there. We will be
planning to talk to the NewYork Times way before expiration. I anticipate negotiating
with them in the fall because I need to get the group of people who are 37,38, 42, 45,
we have to build the bridge for these people to reach 62 and the time tom do that would
be now while we have leverage, to wait until 2017 would be ridiculous because then we
would be at the mercy of the Times and some of you are aware the the Times has
already done to the Mailers and the Mailers have a big plight across the whole country
but the Times is cutting everywhere, the Boston guys know this because they did at the
Globe, the same thing in the Times. Id like to switch to the Daily News, I have a working
relationship with these people, are they still trying to beat us out of overtime and trying
to have more control.. of course thats what they do but basically they are decent people
who really want to work and really want to print and they are out there banging the
bushes. Positive note at the News is they are printing 3 million copies of commercial
work which was formerly at a nonunion shop so we took 3 million copies from nonunion
shops and were printing them in the New York jurisdiction which Im really proud of.
Now to do that we had to make accommodations, we had to make
accommodations..how can you be marketable when you are competing against a
nonunion shop with no benets and what our members have to realize is that its not just
our scale, but its your scale, plus the welfare money, the pension money and everything
they have to contribute to that bumps up the value of a Journeyman so when you are
competing against a shop that has two guys that run around and make a hundred
dollars a day with no pension and no medical its very difcult to give our union proposal
and have something thats acceptable to your membership but I think weve pulled it off
as I previously reported to you guys that we went to Germany a few years back and the
Times bought the KBA I know a lot about the KBA now brothers and sisters. We have
the mini KBA with all the bells and whistles does everything on it work the way they said
No but most of it actually does, for a change and I think thats the theme is the
Publisher telling you the truth about everything no but hes telling you more of the truth
than hes told you before because they really are losing money, I can see that, and I
think that brought about a different relationship in New York we went from a military
zone to a diplomatic relationship because they are in the soup with us and if they go
down we go down and vice versa and I think the Publishers are starting to see this. So
the plight is to explain to your own members how do we have four guys there instead of
ve why do we have three there instead of four because ve times zero is zero and four
times zero is zero and four times one is four and three times one is three so these
simple math equations have to be really imparted upon our members and they dont like
it and we dont like to say it and we have directions but this is how it is and I think any
labor leader in North America here youre not worth your salt if you are not telling these
guys the truth right to their face and tell them the truth this is how its got to be. So thats
what we and do and thats what Im trying to do with our guys and Im very proud of
them, I reported some of this last year but it went on through this year. I have
Journeymen that where on [inaudible] for four weeks from the Daily News and because
they where on [inaudible] they created jobs for 10 to 15 Journeymen behind them Im
very proud of these guys. You know we still have apprentices in New York. we have 70
apprentices in New York, I believe its about 70 maybe 75 and those kids went on a four
day work week and they [inaudible] for seven weeks but they kept everybody working
we kept 25 apprentices at the Daily News. So if you look at we went from 9 presses to 7
presses at the Daily News now we have 3 I have about eighty people working on those
3 presses because we are printing night and day we are printing the Chinese papers,
the Jewish papers we are printing the Espanyol, three different types of Latin papers I
have to tell you that in these Latin papers the images and photographs are something
that we are not used to and that my men have become excellent registration
men[laughter]. The joke amongst the Publishers is that they dont need quality control
anymore, it looks really good. Im proud of the Union I really am, proud of all of us here,
we are doing the best we can. Ill switch to the New York Post which is my third plant,
the Post is losing 50-60 million dollars a year, we all know that, its Rupert Murdochs
plant. We have the Wall Street Journal there, the Wall Street Journal is just as the New
York Times who has surpassed Ganett, Ganett is not the big shop no more they are on
their way down as we see I think the late Bobby Bryant would have a smile on his face
when it comes to things like that, if we cant organize them all then lets see them die on
the vine. I bring you greetings from New York and again I want to thank everybody for
giving us a hand here to have the Conference, its so important for us to stay together,
its not that we dont want to be with anyone else we are part of a larger picture and we
really all understand that but its very important to stay here as brothers and sisters and
relay information. I learned a lot and I want to thank the Toronto Star, the people in
Toronto, when I start to negotiate with the New York Times I told you last year Im going
to try to use your model. I thought I had a great idea, i come up to them and said Ive
got this great idea and I want to try and they said we just did so it just goes to show you
we dont have the market cornered here and that we can all learn from each other. By
and large the union we are getting smaller we all know this, but we are working and by
the grace of God well all be here next year and that well be giving you a similar report
and that I hope everybody is working. God bless us and God bless our Union, thank
you [applause].
Joe Inemer: Thats a very good report John, thank you.Any other Locals that would like
to give a report at this time? Its very important that the Locals give a report so that we
all know whats going on around the country. Since the Credential Committee is still out
there Ill give my Local report. I represent Local 16 out of Philadelphia and District
Council 9 it encompasses [inaudible]New Jersey, Delaware and parts of [inaudible] like
John I represent primarily newspapers and its been a tough couple of years. The
biggest paper I have is the Philadelphia Enquirer we are coming up to negotiations and
six months back the Publisher told us that they are losing over a quarter million dollars a
week, a week. I had to call Jim Kimble from the IBT in to do a nancial audit and Jim
told me I had better get a contract quickly. We had to give up concessions, we had a
lay off but we did get a buyout for people but everybody is working. Since that time we
have been able to bring in commercial work and we are beginning to see the fruits of
that, to go ahead sometimes you have to take one step back in order to take two steps
forward, I see us taking our rst step forward now. Everybody is working. [inaudible]
Post in New Jersey was on its death bed we gave them the commercial model that they
needed that kept everybody working and theyve hired seven people within the last four
months to keep up with the work extra shifts guys from outside where coming in, they
averaged 2 shifts per month for outside people. Last week we had 32 people in one
week. Thats whats happening so even though we gave up concessions youre working
and Im happy to say we took some of that work from nonunion shops, so that makes
me happy. Thank you [applause] I want to reassure you that just as John said when we
negotiate we may have to suck it up and do whats best to keep everybody working. Yes
a 50$ raise would be nice but I guarantee you wont be working. You have to stay
competitive because the nonunion people will cut you in the throat and cut you to the
bone. When we are out there, organizing is important. Last year we where fortunate,
years ago newspaper guys would organize newspapers but now we have to do what
we have to do, we organized a direct [inaudible] which has since been bought by
Quadgraphics we got almost 500 new members for the Local and thats a good number
[applause] Currently District Council 9 are having a battle with a company and I called
Rick Putnam and he has been very instrumental in those negotiations and we won the
right to have an election, the company challenged it and it was ruled in our favor and
now the company are going to take it up to higher court. Thats where were at but if its
anything to you need to ght the battle. Organizing is very important you have to get
out there and organize. I see the fruits of it and I know Mike Huggins was a big help last
year and dont be afraid to use the talent you have and the things you have at your
disposal in Washington. Give Ritchie a call and he will set you up with someone, theres
a lot of talent down there, you cant do it by yourself and thats what you pay your per
capita tax for, use it, use it wisely but use it and it will pay off you spend hours and
hours organizing and it can be frustrating but when you get that one victory boy youll
feel like a million dollars. I can remember Rick Putnam calling George up on the phone
when he got the tally and Rick had a smile from ear to ear but it was months and
months of hard work, you have to keep it up guys. Other than that our Local is doing
very well everybody is working and thats it from me and Local 16.Thank you.[applause]
Jim Early 13N Detroit: District Council 3. Id like to give you a report from Detroit, we
have a bitter sweet story as many of you know as we gathered here many years ago in
1995 we went through a very bitter strike and we are under the Ganett properties the
bitter sweet is that today is we negotiated this year has been a very large year for
contracts, we also had to take the bitter sweet out of negotiating shutdown agreements
for three of our shops out of the seven that we represented. In those shutdown
agreements there were some language in there for buyouts and concessions, we sat a t
the table for many hours with the company and we got buyouts for all the shops and
that was not easy to do. We started in January 2013 and we just nished up with a
McComb daily and lost 13 pressmen there but we got them all buyouts and they were
also absorbed at the DMP at Toledo, Columbus and our other shops. On a good note at
the DMP they are having to go to three shifts since McComb did shutdown we absorbed
the 98 pieces that they were printing we are now running around the clock they are
trying to put together a night shift we just had our union meeting last night to try to gure
out just how we are going to do this because we dont have people. We dont have
enough people to run the presses and when have you ever heard that before. We are
now looking for people, they can apply online under Ganett to look for Journeymen
pressmen. We just negotiated a contract with Ganett for the DMP, we started in
October 2012 and we nished in March 2013 this year and we went at them. They
wanted everything and so did we. We ended up with what they were trying to shove
down our throats was this New York Empire insurance which we would be paying fty
percent per year for the insurance which is I dont know if youve heard of New York
Empire Insurance but it is no insurance Ganett is self insured so thats why they wanted
to shove it down our throats. We brought in some representatives from the NEHP they
put together a package and Ganett sat there and looked at it and we showed them that
we could save them in the rst year in interest costs alone 2 million dollars he was very
envious of that. So after a long negotiations over all those months we ended up with a
three year contract a 1 and 1 increase and we got our insurance that we wanted and not
what they wanted to shove down our throats. It took our negotiators long hours upto 13
hours a day for months but we stood strong. Our circulation in Detroit has increased
over 40,000 per day in production which is good for us. Like New York said they were
doing a million over the weekend, we were doing 1.3 million on weekends now were
doing 677,000 on weekends. On our insurance we have no deductibles but we have
doctor visit co-pays, we are coming out of paying 3, 5 and 6 hundred dollars a year to
meet your deductibles to the doctor. We are ninety-nine percent unionized in there
Ganett would not give us union securities in our contracts but everybody stuck together
and they are sticking together. The people that we are hiring are coming into the union
the rst time in all of my years that I have been doing this, for many years since 2003/04
that I was excited about putting membership packages together it was an honor to put
those packages together so that we can bring these members into our union and we
can grow our union.[applause] In our other shop we are printing the USA Today, the
Detroit News and Detroit Freepress and the McComb Daily and the Oakland Press. We
are also running 98 other small pieces so you can imagine each one of these products
are printed some of them are as low as 5000 pieces and some are up in the 240,000
pieces. We have to shut the press down and put it back together again and get back up
and print that product again over and over again on a nightly basis. The men are
working overtime within 3 and 4 hours a night and working seven days a week. Now
they are burning their people out already its only happened in the last six weeks. Our
Saginaw shop right now is in negotiations the company has come out and said they
want to gut the entire contract, we have our members up there as we speak trying to
negotiate a fair contract trying to get everything we can and trying to keep everything we
can, we are going to stay strong as well. In September 2011 we lost a shop which was 9
members those 9 members some of whom retired and some where absorbed in other
shops. Some went to McComb which is now closed so we are bringing them into our
shop which is were the only mother ship left, we have some small shops and we hope
they can stay healthy as well. The plus side to bringing a delegate to this Conference is
that like everyone else here is saying we have to stay together and know whats going
on in everyone elses shop, we have to know where people are needed so that the
pressmen out there and these people who need jobs know where to go. I think its very
important that we communicate better than what we have in the past and what we do in
the future. Thank you. [applause]
Joe Inemer: Thank you Jim.
Ron Pineda 140N Los Angeles: I will give my local report later on I just wanted to ask
the Organizing Committee to meet at the back of the room when we close so I can see
when we can have a meeting, thats all.
Joe Inemer: Are there any other locals that would like to give their report at this time?
Chris Lang 24M Pittsburgh: I do not want to give a report but I do have a request
Pittsburgh Post Gazette is putting in a new press a GOSS Uniliner which will totally
eliminate my whole platemaking department if anybody knows anything about this and
the effects it will have, I would greatly appreciate any information and try to protect my
members jobs. Please see me if you have any information, thank you.
Joe Inemer: Thanks Chris. Okay tomorrow we will have to get the rest of the reports
from the locals just come up, these reports are important. For any Committees, you
know who the Chairman is, get together and nd out when you are going to meet.Local
1C from Washington will be meeting in the back after this Conference today. At this
point I think we will have the draw for the fty/fty and Judy will you pick the ticket 305
dollars for the winning ticket #426.[applause] $305 Peter McQuaid[inaudible
background noise]. Okay guys and gals that will be it until tomorrow well meet here at 9
oclock. Motion to adjourn? Second? [inaudible audience] Ayes have it. Have a good
day guys!
Adjournment.
Tuesday, May 21, 2014 Meeting Minutes
Joe Inemer:At this time I would like to say good morning to everyone. Id like everyone
to stand up and I would like to call up our good friend from the Northern parts Tom
Donnelly and he is going to help us sing the Star Spangled Banner [applause]. If you
know the words please join in.
Tom Donnelly: Honestly Ive never sung this as its a tough song and I wouldnt want to
screw it up. Ill give it my best shot. [Tom sings the Anthem along with the audience].
Yeah!!![applause and whistles].
Joe Inemer: Thats what you call a good neighbour, now please remain standing and
Tom will sing the Canadian anthem.
[Tom sings the Canadian anthem....applause].
Thank you,Tom. Could you please stand in for a moment, were all aware of the tragic
tornado that ripped through Oklahoma yesterday, and many people are missing, its a
real tragedy so please give a moment of silence. Thank you. Some quick business here
the By-law committee will meet at the front of the room at the rst coffee break and you
contact Mike Heine. We need to remind the delegates that they need to pay their
registration fees for their spouses for the dinner tonight if you havent done so please do
it. The Newspaper Committee will meet at the end of today in this room as this is a large
committee. Any other committee that would like to meet we have rooms on the other
side of the pool. Take a moment to recogonize John Savage and Bob Osiepa of the
CEP as I forgot to mention them yesterday, and John Laspina from 406.
John Agenbroad DC3: Point of special priviledge Mr. Chairman Mike Heine is 58 years
old today so can we sing Happy Birthday to him. [applause... Audience sings Happy
Birthday].
Joe Inemer: Mike its your turn to buy tonight! [applause]. Okay, again are there any
Committees who would like to give their reports at this time? Please state your name
and local when you come to the mic.
Ronnie Pineda L140N: Organizing Committee met on Monday May 20, 2014, we had a
very nice committee which included Secretary Larry Manziano L8N, Jim Longerbone
L1M, Charles Reney L140N, Ray Williams L100M and Mark Carpino L458M and we
where pleased to have International organizers Marty Keegan and Rick Putnam sit in
and offer us some valuable information and I thank them for that.. We met for over two
hours and I can say that I have been on the Organizing Committee since coming to this
Conference and this was the longest meeting I have ever attended, so hopefully we got
some really good stuff out of that. The committee decided we need to get better at
organizing if we are going to survive. The Organizing committee came up with the
following plan of action:
1. Each Local should have an Organizing committee in house and that committee
should report at monthly union meetings as a regular order of business.
2. Obviously we need leads or targets and I would ask you to go to your members,
family, friends, neighbours and anywhere to try to nd organizing leads inside or
outside of the parameters on the street.
3. Again once you do have a target you need someone inside its important to have a
target inside the shops they are very valuable to provide information to organizers
and committees. Once you do have that again from our experience do not hesitate to
call the International and have them come out and help us and its been successful,
theyre not just good at organizing but are also helpful in beating back de-certs and
de-ops and Ill cover that in my Local report later. The International organizers are a
resource and we need to utilize them we have to remember no job is too big or too
small. Thank you. [applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you Ron, are there any other committees that would like to do their
report?
Peter McQuaid National Rep CEP: Im going to give a report at the newspaper
committee. I would like to tell you that the CEP is merging with the CAW in Canada. We
are having a founding Convention in Toronto on Labour Day weekend and we will be the
largest private sector Union with 300,000 members so its a really good thing.To follow
up on Bob Laceys talk yesterday about organizing, this new union has committed $10
million per year to organizing, 10 million to organizing every year to organizing because
we see we have to do it, the density of unions is falling all across North America
especially in the private sector so committing 10 million to organizing is a great thing.
The new union is unnamed yet we dont know the name of our union, its going to be
unveiled I believe in June with the founding convention in September and we are going
to be marching on Labour Day Monday in the parade carrying our new colors and ags.
Joe Inemer: Thank you[applause]. Any Regional Reps want to give their reports yet?
None. At this time it gives me great pleasure to introduce our International President of
the Graphic Communication Conference, we all know him, please give a warm welcome
to George Tedeschi[applause].
George Tedeschi: Thank you, thank you brothers and sisters, guests, delegates and
ofcers. Its always a pleasure to be here naturally, its good to see we always have a
good turn out and thats really important because we see some of our other
Conferences starting to diminish in numbers, but the newspaper people are toughest
and always seem to hang on the longest and thats something to be proud of and I
guess were the toughest because were always in ghts we always stand up and our
employers and the people we have contracts keep us that way but thats ok no problem
well do it weve done it for decades and well continue to do it. Joe talked about
Oklahoma and the rst thing I think of Oklahoma and you see so much about it and the
tragedy is a representative who used to come to these Conferences for decades Teddy
Strempel, Teddy passed away about a year ago, he used to run that local out there in
Tulsa even though he was retired for a number of years he still used to come with his
wife and they were a very important part of this Conference and thats who I think of in
this tragedy out there I think of Teddy. Teddy was a good man its a huge tragedy out
there and they should be in our prayers and anything you can do to help nancially with
those organizations, those people out there they have lost everything and lets pray that
the children in the schools that they have not found are somehow safe. Its also good to
see friends that I havent seen for a long time who havent been here, Brother Sherlock
newspaper Local #8 who used to be an ofcer of this local union and also regional
representative for many many years, Brother Sherlock its good to see him. Bill Burrish
International Representative its good that he came in, hes from the Baltimore area and
it was already pointed out that Brother John Laspina who was President of my
hometown Local [applause] and it is interesting also that you have a member whose
been a member of the Pressmans Union and in the GCIU and actually went into
management for a bit of time he was always a good union man and actually he has
more tenure than myself and probably the only guy who still hangs out in the union
enviroment that has more time than myself in Local 406 and thats Charlie Ty, Charlie
started out as a yboy and he went into the machine shop and worked his way up to be
foreman, he worked in the Mailingroom and other areas but hes also with us he hangs
out with the other delegates and brother Laspina from L406 so its good to see him its
the rst time hes been to one of these Conferences and to see what its all about and to
realize how we do work to try to look at the issues confronting us[applause]. We also
have the San Diego delegates naturally who come in even though they are retired they
are still the glue of San Diego, George Huber and Rick Montesano[applause] they have
been coming for a number of years I know their Local doesnt have money but they
come on their own, thats very very good its nice that they keep that unit going. Then we
have Brother Tom Donnelly who doesnt want to quit because we give him the
opportunity to sing and if you give him an opportunity to sing hell go anywhere and do
anything for you so we learned that a while ago and so here is stufng the fty-fty
ballot box[applause] so if you think youre going to win you can forget about it, and its
always nice to see our brothers from Canada who come here and they have been
coming for a long time[applause] Brother Savage, John Webster the CEP representative
also. I also want to mention that a good friend of the Newspaper Conference who was
an ofcer for many many years of the Specialty Conference and Secretary-Treasurer of
Toronto L100M George Novac, George has taken ill, hes home now after some medical
problems, he was able to go in and have operations and hes been in rehab for about
six months or so I have been in contact with him and I think it would be really nice I
know John Savage has his home phone I dont have it with me, so if anyone needs it
you can contact me and I will make sure you get it. He has a lot of friends here and Im
sure he would like to hear from you, so give George a phone call. An interesting
conversation I had with George on the last call I had with him which was just recently,
about a month ago and he was telling me about the medical problems both him and his
wife were having and he said thank God that he has the healthcare system that Canada
provides he says that we dont understand why the Americans are so against a national
healthcare program he says and they always use Canada as a reason why we dont
want it because we dont want the same healthcare system that Canada has. He says I
had a problem he went to the Doctor they took care of me I had the operation they put
me in a rehab centre and it didnt cost me a penny, he says its great. We are the only
people who criticize that, I shouldnt say we because not all of us in this room dont and
I know the naysayers you have to just come out with a reason why youre against
something so you grasp at anything and this well talk about in this conversation about
the Republicans and the Tea Party they are relentless about bull rather than talking
facts. So just as a conversation I had with someone thats using the system and I didnt
even ask him he volunteered it how thankful he is to be able to have this kind of
healthcare system. We have some GCIU staff here, naturally you heard Bob speak
yesterday, my executive assistant Richard, Ritchie is the guy that you hear and talk to
most in the International Union because if you have a problem and you need something
he takes care of it and makes sure that its done for you because myself and Bob are
normally travelling somewhere else with other chores. We also have some of our other
staff here we have Marty Keegan Organizer, [applause] yes Marty would like some kind
of applause, he doesnt get much recogonition we got Marty Keegan, Mike Huggins and
Rick Putnam[applause] all of these guys do I great job. Nick Caruso wanted to be here
but he has DC2 meetings today coming up and he has to be there, Nick is the trustee
for DC2 and he is doing an outstanding job out there. Its really good, those of you who
may remember for years we never had any representation out of DC2 to the Newspaper
Conference some years back Im talking decades ago district council used to come in
Fred Carrell used to come in with a large entourage, but he used to do that because he
was always trying to take it over, he always ran someone against me as president to try
and take it over, but unfortunately he never prevailed and he just got tired of losing so
he just stopped coming. He used to send John Skayhill, for a time. John was a nice
man and all that but he was here as Freds eyes and ears and everybody knew it so to
throw a zinger at Fred you told John something and he would run back and get Fred all
wound but since Fred is gone hes not and well talk about that a little bit. Fred is no
longer in charge of DC2, its under trusteeship[applause] Nick has said to the
newspaper locals which are from Omaha and also Salt Lake City that yes you guys
should come here and we have two of the delegates here and the principle ofcer and
they wanted to be here too. They wanted to be able to come here with there fellow
newspaper brothers and sisters so thats a real good thing. [audience: thank you
George] Youre very welcome! I also want to say a little bit of interesting comment, I
guess about a week or two ago I was in Atlantic City at the Eastern Regional
Conference and we had the pleasure of introducing a good old southern boy by the
name of Travis Lester but he didnt say Travis Lester like Im saying Travis Lester he
said it kind of funny like you know with a southern drawl. He was a nice southern boy,
nice fellow. He came in with Bob Kelly, Bob Kelly brought him in from Chattanooga hes
the principal ofcer from Chattanooga and hes a member of that local union and he
owns a t-shirt company but the interesting part about owning the t-shirt company not
only does he make the shirts but they actually make them and they do the silk screening
or embroidery and whatever you want but the t-shirts are totally made with recycleable
material they are made by using old soda bottles and cotton and theres a process that
they make a yarn out of that and they make cloth and he takes the cloth and he makes
t-shirts out of it, so the t-shirts are made out of 100% recycleable material and they
wear very well, because they had samples and he was giving them out and he gave us
some and we tried them and its really a good product and it has the GCC/IBT union
made 50-50 100% recycleable material tag[applause]. Thats something you dont see
to often so were doing is were trying to let people know about this, so if you order shirts
and your local are interested we can give you the information and you can contact
Ritchie he has all the contact info and we will put you in touch with Travis and hell take
care of it. In addition to that, he even had boxes made, he sent a couple of shirts to my
ofce, so we get this big box with a big eagle on it made in USA by Teamster Union,
with the Teamster logo on it and about 4 t-shirts in it so I called him and he said did you
get the shirts and I said yes I got the shirts but why did you send that big box? he said
that the box is too cool I had to show you[laughter] hes so proud that its made in the
USA he said I get companies calling me to put my label in China, made in Bangladesh
and those other places t-shirts he said I could make money doing that but Im not going
to do that,I refuse to do it and for those of you who where at the Eastern Conference he
was a real character and if you can support him I think we really should. I just want to
take a moment to do, we are making an effort at the International to try to put together a
better calendar of events, we have been doing this for a while now we are trying to
dissiminate this information back to the different locals, conferences as well as to
pension funds and we are putting together calendar events, agendas coming forward
which lists all of the future meetings if you want to know when youre meeting at certain
things or you are scheduling something call again Ritchie or my secretary Kathy and
she will tell you if there is a conict, if somebody else has something scheduled so we
dont have to compete if you want myself or Bob or Richard or International staff or even
a lot of you who sit on Boards of Trustees and funds you cant be everyplace at once so
you can chose I know you dont like to chose, like right now I could either come here or
Im a trustee on the joint pension board which is the bindery but I choose to be here but
I should also be there, so we are all work to try and eliminate this and we do have all the
reduce dates of a lot of activities and we are trying to even push the IBT which is very
difcult get a constructive agenda from Norm. I do have some important dates for 2014
because I know that many of you attend and that is the Unity Conference next year is
going to be May 4 to the May 7 thats the same time as the Hoffa scholarship program
and thats going to be in Las Vegas. Another function that I know some delegates here
attend and you really should if you have women in your local you should attend this and
if you have principal ofcers I know Laura you have attended many of them and
Christina you should really go to this, this is a cool thing, its the Teamster Womens
Conference its in Chicago on September 2 to 8 and some of those dates are travel days
and this years Womens Conference is in New Orleans in September so Christina if you
get a chance to go its really inspiring and its going to be September 19 to 23. If you
need information on that you can call my ofce and get that. I also want to introduce
another fellow that everybody knows really thats important to the GCC and that is our
newspaper the Graphic Communicator, the Graphic Communicator I believe is one of
the better publications in the labor movement, I would never say the best because they
would say Im bias but its denitely in the top of the list and its done by a very large
staff of numerous people but the head of that staff is me[laugh] but really its all done by
one person and thats Fred Brunning[applause] Fred does a hell of a job, he really really
does. He annoys the whole GCC staff going into production and I saw his wife here
last night at dinner and she says I know he loves doing this but he really disrupts the
whole house when hes working on this and I believe it because he disrupts my house
too. He does an excellent job and you really should read it, it has good articles in it you
should post some of those articles in your shops if you think they have interest to your
membership, they are up to date on whats going on in our industry and on the political
scene, so if you have something that you want to contribute, or you have a good idea or
you want to send a letter make sure you send it to myself at GCC headquarters and I
make sure Fred gets it and its a good possibility that it will get into the Graphic
Communicator. We also have Zach Dowdy out of Local 406 who is VP of the unit there
he is a contributor, Zach[applause] Zach does articles for us on a regular basis as well
as a lot of former Newsday editorial staff. We are very unique and lucky because the
editorial staff at Newsday are all members of L406 and members of our International
Union so thats a rare plus and hopefully Marty Keegan will take care and Ronnie
Pineda will do some organizing in the LA Times and I know that Marty is going to give
us a whole presentation of his plan to do that. I was at a General Board meeting of the
teamsters just two weeks ago which was right before the scholarship program and the
Unity and they gave out some interesting information and Im just going to touch on the
bottom line of the information. The Hoffa scholarship fund raised at this years outting
2,540,000 dollars thats how much they raised at the scholarship program[applause]
astounding! from one event. They give out 900,000 dollars a year in scholarships to
Teamster members and if you read the list of recipients they are GCC members we just
had one which we did an article about in the Graphic Communicator in Pennsylvania I
forget the location in Pennsylvania, but its a member of DC9 and I dont know if you
know who the person is but she won 10,000 dollars in a scholarship so its a great thing
and I dont think people realize that. Let me briey touch on DC2 because a lot of
people are asking whats going on with that, its been in trusteeship longer than we
wanted it to be but thats not something that we control, its a Teamster trusteeship not a
GCC trusteeship and its a Teamster trusteeship because there is an individual who I
wont mention his name but all of you know him, hes a pudgy guy, he kind of gave
information to the Teamsters about DC2 and said that they were doing things that were
inappropriate and illegal. He didnt come to us with it he went to the Teamsters with it,
the Teamsters then upon receiving that information sent an auditor to DC2 and they
conrmed that in fact there were numerous violations of labor law in dealing with
nancial matters. They had a trial actually I shouldnt say trial as trial is incorrect, they
had a hearing on the allegations were everybody has an opportunity to state their
position. The hearing was held in Los Angeles and I sent Tom Jolley as my
representative, just to be an observer Tom said it was a really a very democratic
hearing, everybody had a chance to say what they wanted and DC2 including Fred
were present and were able to make any statements and answer any questions and
cross examine any witnesses and anything that they wanted to do, the more they talked
the more they dug themselves into a hole. They were found that they should be but
under stewardship, trusteeship because of the numerous violations and General
President Hoffa at that time did put DC2 under trusteeship and he put under trusteeship
with a Teamster trustee somebody from the IBT. Naturally this is something that I didnt
want and the General Board and Bob didnt want, so I was able to through discussions
with the General President and some of his other staff I was able to remove the IBT
trustee and we were able to put in Nick Caruso, so we assigned Nick in there as the
trustee and as well as Tom Jolley to assist Nick, Tom Jolley is one of our organizers. Its
been almost two years, that Council is run completely different today than the way it has
been, its totally transparent, they revamped and wrote a new constitution and by-laws,
they made a new nance committee, they educated everybody on how a democratic
organization union is supposed to work and they still hold their area meetings and we
are going to hold elections and we hope that they should be out of trusteeship by
sometime before the end of the year have new elections and have their own ofcers
structure and be on their own again[applause]. The important thing is I have been trying
to attend as many of those meetings that I can actually they are having one now so I
couldnt be there as well two delegates from the newspaper local would have chose to
be here also, the way that Council grew itself they have so much talent and so much
ability to do things they were never able to express and do things everything was held
down everything went through the two Principal Ofcers Fred and Ryan and like even at
the general board Clark Ritchie one of the staff reps he does an excellent job he was
there with Ryan but he really wasnt allowed to talk because Ryan wouldnt let him talk
and previously when Fred was there he had Steve Northbrook and he had another guy,
a big guy anyways they werent allowed to talk either Fred or Ryan were the only one
that talked and as soon as those people were removed Clark now is a good strong
participating member of that board and its really very good to see that, its refreshing
and so a way the union should be, if you have something to say, say it I never stopped
anyone from talking or expressing their opinion whether I was the Local President or I
was President of this conference, I was President of the International Union or at any
meeting or convention if you had something to say you said it and if you ran out of time I
turned the microphone off but thats your problem[laughter] but thats the rules of the
conference it wasnt me I was just following the rules, I dont have a time clock you all
know thats the power of the chair but its really a good thing and hopefully this will all be
behind us and everyone will be encouraged and be smart, dont do something stupid in
your home local. Otherwise the biggest things, comments people said cant believe how
they allowed themselves to be put in this position Im not talking about the delegates Im
talking about Fred and Ryan, well Fred really he was a smart guy so why do you put
yourself in this position were you jeopardize yourself. The end result is that the
Department of Labor held an investigation and were told they plan on prosecuting Fred
and Ryan and some other people, non of the existing staff but some other people who
have been removed I dont know who exactly the other people are they are just waiting
for the court system to do this but were told that they will be prosecuted so not a good
thing and not a good place to be. So dont let yourself be caught up in this, the
Department of Labor have a lot of rules and regulations as well as the Teamsters rules
and regulations, I follow them, Bob follows them Ritchie follows them all of our staff
follow them and you have to follow them also its just the way it is and what ticks me off
to is that the Tea Party is complaining about the IRS they kind of had a close
investigation on a were really looking at them and saying well come into our world they
examine everything and its random like we are criminals we have to do this its nuts you
go out to dinner you have to get a copy of the bill, write everyones name down, what did
you talk about, who was there, why did you do it and management people or anybody
else do what they want, Im not saying you should have unnecessary oversight but
come on those are the people that want to kill us and they are bitching and crying.
Welcome to the real world!
Your local pension plan I know youre going to hear a lot about it Bob touched on it
yesterday and I know John is going to talk to you about it, one of the big things is its the
best fund left standing, all the other funds are still good so if your participating in it
youre going to receive a benet, some of the funds are better than the others but the
strongest fund and the fund that has the most potential of surviving the full benets
payments and opportunity for that is the uni-local pension fund it has numerous benets
and its a fund you really should be looking at if you arent involved in it now especially
Right to Work states as Bob pointed out its a great benet, a lot of people are getting
miss information about it if you need anything, you can talk to John Agenbroad, I think
he gave you booklets and with contact information again you can also call my ofce. We
are looking in to bringing in numerous Teamsters in to this fund and I know John is
going to talk about this so Im not going to touch on it. This is the only fund legally that
has the ability by changing benet structure either by increasing or decreasing it
tweaking it the guarantees its solvency the only fund available were you are guaranteed
to get at least 100% of the monies you put into it. No other fund has this so really
consider this Im not going to spend anytime on this because I know John wants to.
Newspaper Conference we should talk about the newspaper industry...we all know that
the newspaper industry is in peril and its not our fault its nothing we did, we did our job,
we produced a paper we do a great job with it, we do it through storms, blizzards
whatever the weather we produce that newspaper whatever...how old the presses are,
no matter what the system is, or how often they change the process we educate
ourselves and we do it and we do it well. Were not the problem! I think part of the
problem is that some of the publishers dont adapt to the change and are more
interested in money in their pockets but the biggest obstacle we know is the digital age.
The computer world and we are not going to stop it...everybody here has some type of
electronic gadget some more sophisticated than others, many of you are carrying the
bigger things the i-pads and you have them with you. People look towards that as the
latest means and the quickest means of updated communication...and the young people
do it more than the senior people. Im going to read you some statistics from the
February issue of the Editor and Publisher its a few months back 2013 just a couple of
little quips from it. Several years ago the Washington Post convened a series of focus
groups to learn why most people younger than 45 years old did not subscribe to a
newspaper a problem persisting to this day throughout the overwhelming print industry
and that includes books because the Kindles and all the rest. The problem was that the
respondents many of them who happily consumed the news on digital devices, drew the
line at the pile of old newspapers cluttering up their lives, they just dont like the darn
newspaper because it clutters up their life. From my experience I prescribe to the
Washington Post in my house does it clutter up the kitchen yes youre darn right it does,
you get a pile of them. Sometimes you when you travel you dont get a chance to read
them and they are still there when you get home and I just throw them in the recycle.
Young people dont want to be tolerated with that. The print product remains
unappealing to people younger than 45 and we have some statistics. People 65 and
older 48% of those still read a newspaper people 50 age group it drops down to 30%
people 40 drops down to 16% people in their 20s drops down to 6%. This was done by
the Pugh Research Center, the Pugh found that only 29% of the American population
read a newspaper now compared to 56% in 1991 ...staggering! Then they have the
circulation changes form 2005 versus 2013 the Wall Street Journal dropped 28%, USA
Today dropped 35%, the New York Times dropped 36%, the LA Times dropped 52%,
the Washington Post dropped 43%, Chicago Tribune dropped 36% New York Daily
News dropped 51% the New York Post dropped 56% Arizona Republic dropped 37%
Newsday dropped 40% and heres a bright spot the Tampa Bay Times improved 1%.
Thats the bright spot nonunion[audience noise],[inaudible]Chronicle 56% Minneapolis
Star Tribune 40%, Cleveland Dealer 38%, Denver Post 20%, Boston Globe Marty 56%,
Philedelphia Enquirer Joe 59%, Chicago Sun Times 49%, Newark Star Ledger 41%,
Orange County Register 54%, Atlanta Constitution 47%, San Diego Tribune 61%, LA
Review Journal 37%, and Honolulu Star 13%. Not encouraging for us but if you heard
John Heffernan yesterday he said and I agree with John, the newspaper industry will
still be here, and hes right I believe hes right at least for the foreseeable future, I think
its pretty far out I dont know what its going to look like as we progress, he also said
that youve got to be smart, you have to be smart and he talked about how in his local
they have brought in a lot of what we call outside commercial work and I know because
I used to talk to John about it and talked to his predecessors about it even in my own
local union and some of you when I was President of this conference even going back
that far. We must get involved in other product and I remember when the local unions
would resist it because back then we were fat cats because everything was going great
we were making lots of money life was good! Look ahead but a lot of you people dont
like to look ahead but you are the thinkers, you are the leaders youre more progressive
and there were naysayers go back to the membership they live in their little world, all as
their concerned about is am I getting out today can I beat my time, a lot of that has
gone...am I getting any overtime this week and what day do I have off and when is my
vacation pick .....got to be smart thats the key. We have a number of problems right
now, right today in a number of local unions in the newspaper industry where we are
confronted Newsday my home local the biggest issue here is that they want to
outsource the drivers jobs or a good portion of the drivers jobs and they are acclaiming
and Im sure there is some validity to it that with circulation dropping its very costly to
deliver to single sales meaning the what we used to call candy stores and not that they
are candy stores anymore theyre 7 elevens, supermarkets and these other outlets so
they dont want to spend, I mean our drivers make $1100 - $1200 per week base pay
$32 an hour, 35 hour work week plus the truck and all the rest and they dont want to
spend all that to on single copy sales when they think some of the stores dont sell that
many products maybe a set of 5 or less so they want to cut but theyre willing to do this
but they can do it cheaper theyre willing to keep that circulation in which is really a good
thing for the newspaper because it still creates some revenue and still a good thing as it
creates some pressmen jobs and other jobs within the company and the union jobs but
these guys are going to get whacked. Tough situation as we represent the drivers in
L406 you have the chairman right here Bobby but its something we have to look at in
the Editorial department they keep saying to us, we represent the Editorial staff to, we
have a couple of hundred members there. Right now they have layoff by seniority like
we all do at least most of us probably do and they want to be able to select who they
layoff and we were able to constantly rebut that, stop that we wouldnt let them do that
when you layoff layoff by seniority. They want to cut cost wherever they can they are
just like anyone else and in Newsday its a unique situation they are owned by
Cablevision New York Cablevision which is a multibillion dollar company thats making
money up the kazoo, but the newspaper isnt but the parent is, they are not as
benevolent as Rupert Murdoch that owns the New York Post thats willing to lose $50
million a year, theyre saying no, no you carry your own weight, we think its nonsense
however, they own the company and they can do what they want and we have to deal
with it and were trying to deal with it and I think we will eventually work our way out of
this and get some type of agreement. Local 8N Newark, Star Ledger theyre looking at
savings through out the whole units and theyre asking for savings and receiving
savings in every contract in the last probably decade and all the unions have been
giving all the unions and in there the problem is confronting both the pressmen the GCC
workers and the IBT Mailers, the drivers are represented by an independent newspaper
mail deliverers union who have a long term contract so they are not involved but the
mailers and pressmen are and one of the things is shut the plant down and move it to
one of the Local 2s pressroom at the Daily News. Pittsburgh 9N and 24N pressmen as
well as the mailers and the drivers in Pittsburgh there the company is saying we want to
get new equipment, new plant because our equipment is old we want to make that
investment but you have to pay for it. They are looking for millions of dollars in
concessions from the unions, the unions dont have it they dont have it I mean they can
take everything we got and we still dont have it. We still dont know where thats going
to go, thats Joe Molinero leading that, thats his home local. Then you have Phoenix
the Gannet newspaper here, you have the GCC and the IBT Teamster mailers involved
and theyre looking for typical Gannet, I want wage reductions again, I want to take
away more of your vacation, I want take away this I want to take away that they are
relentless. How do we deal with that? These are problems theyre not the solutions,
these are tough times for us because our industry is hurting and they know that a lot of
people are happy to have a job because as bad as our life maybe in the newspaper and
what theyre proposing its still better than a lot of other people have or where else can I
nd a better job and some people can nd a better job and some people are close to
retirement and they are willing to do it and in some places we can get enhanced buyout
packages which is a good thing. But the key is, think about the problem and seriously
try to gure out a solution you can tell the employer you no all you want but at some
point you have to gure out how you are going to solve the problem because if you dont
they do have the right to declare an impasse and post conditions we had a situation
which Bob talked about over in DC3, CGX and[inaudible] plant with 300 or 400 people
this happened they couldnt not because the union wasn't trying reach a compromising
solution because the employer just said screw you I want what I want and Im going to
take it. They worked under posted conditions for about 4 or 5 years, 4 or 5 years under
posted conditions they just Bob was able to solve that problem through the corporate
which was great and they got a contract which was ratied a couple of weeks back, now
they are working under contract. You have to learn and be smart there is I have my job,
to try to work out some kind of an agreement best I can or I can get involved emotionally
were I say I aint doing this screw you and so on and the whole thing. Let the
membership decide, you work for the membership and yes the membership may beat
you up....welcome to the union world! I had membership beat me up when I used to
bring back 6 or 7 percent raises in the good old days and they used to tell me it wasnt
enough. So in good times its not enough and in bad times you are giving them too
much but thats what you got to do. I didnt ask any of you people to be here but all of
you raised your hand and said I want to be a union leader, you want to be a union
leader then lead! we have a problem now, and what we need are the leaders, we need
people that are going to stand up and make the tough choices and think with their
heads and not with their hearts[applause]. Its not an easy thing because most of the
contracts where they are giving things back, people are losing jobs and I know because
I feel the same way now in Washington when I go back to 406 and I see the seniority list
of potential people who can loose their jobs naturally a lot of them are my neighbors
because we used to hire all our friends and family thats what we used to do, I mean
one of the guys was my daughters boyfriend all through high school and now hes got a
family and not with my daughter[laughter] and the guys going to loose his job but the
point is you know these people and its worse if youre the chairman or the local ofcer
youre still living with them Im not there anymore and I see them periodically but theyre
your friends, theyre your neighbors and in some cases theyre your family. Fathers and
sons, sisters and daughters and relatives and they are all our brothers and sisters union
members and we got to give them up, but you give them up to protect the base, its like
being in the military and youre going to attack that hill with an objective and some of
your friends and buddies are not going to make it but you do whats necessary because
thats what you do, youre a leader, youre a ghter and you must prevail and you must
survive and if we dont survive we are going to wither away. A brief story and probably
Sherlocks going to remember this, years ago when we used to have a lot of manning
clauses in the newspaper industry, the International came up and I remember Bill
Parent and before him Fraser Moore they were the newspaper VPs they would say look
you have something of value, the employers want it, the employers are going to take it
so sell it and get the most you can for it and the best deal you can to protect your
people because its coming and the membership I remember this body back then, no
way! no way! and there were a number of strikes, a number of strikes and we lost them
all except for New York Daily News the only one and when the employers realized that
they could produce a product while we were on strike they wanted they no longer
wanted to amend our manning clauses they wanted to eliminate our manning clauses
and they did in a number of our newspapers where they had weaker unions some of the
strong unions still have a manning clause I can probably think of three L406, Boston
and New York and Philadelphia. So a number of you and thats good! We all gave, we
all donated, we all gave our blood but were doing it and were doing it because were
smart and we do what we have to do. Not that there is already enough problems for you
but if you have a problem here and you need assistance and you feel you need the
International please call us we are here to help you and one of the rst things you do
when the company says we are losing money and stuff call us and you will want to have
Jim Kimble come in you have all heard his name, Jim Kimble works in the IBT doing
contract research, hes an economist, hes a good man, a guardian for the newspaper
industry hell come in and it doesnt cost you anything and he will check out the
companies books and he will give you an educated opinion and thats a good thing to
do, so start with that. Even if he veries that they are losing money, you know and
when you go back to talk to your members you can say look we checked, they are
losing money or they are making much less, they are on a decline and we are trying to
save the franchise. Brother Kimble a good man and you should use him. Speak up
when you need it! So we got these problems and we will deal with them like we have in
the past but a whole new set of problems is getting worse and bigger and that is the
political environment in this country, you got the Democrats, the Republicans locked in
and being read by the Tea Party, so you have the nuts being led by the crazies on the
other side and this is my opinion, and since Im up here I can say my opinion, this
country has never been as divided as it is today the object is and Im just talking be
smart, try to reach a compromise and do whats best for everybody. The object is screw
the other guy, they hate Obama whether hes black is that the issue whether hes white
whatever the issue is, hes a democrat that wants control and they are doing everything
they can since this man has been elected worse than any other President that I can
remember to make sure his presidency fails...and the part that really amazes you is that
he won the second term, they cant do anything more to him as far as getting rid of him
but they are still relentless in attacking him, whether its right or its wrong they will take
any issue and blow it up and so many people jump on the bandwagon which really if
you think about some of these things I mean I just touched on the IRS today and he
gets blamed for the IRS, Im sure he has nothing to do with it, I understand its under his
administration, like if something happens in the GCC Im the President I get its my
responsibility just like when Marty or Ricky or Mike do something good out there and we
win, I did it, if Fred does a good newspaper I did it but I also say they did it and give
them credit but thats the system I get it but logic tells you, you have to do whats right
for the country I would think because Oklahoma is a red state it votes, you know crazy
with Right to Work and everything else we should say hey man, you guys are on your
own, what can we do to help those people, as a labour union what can we do to help
those people because they are Americans and they deserve our assistance and help.
These people are politicians elected to support and do whats right for the country as a
whole not for a little sliver. Its really frustrating that this happens and which
accelerating this is some of the action of the US Court of Appeals in the district of
Columbia, the system is, lets take Santa Barbara Newspress most of you are aware of
the situation, we organized that newspaper about ve years ago, the editorial staff and
Wendy McCaw the publisher, she everybody that was involved we went to the LRB and
led charges, the region supported us and said youre right these people should be
reinstated with full back pay, you violated the law, illegal ring. She appeals it and goes
up to the full board in Washington and the full board in Washington hears it and they
agree, they should be reinstated with full back pay she violated the law, illegal ring.
She appeals it, she appeals it to the appeals court in the district of Columbia even
though were in California and the reason they go to the appeals court in the district of
Columbia is because its basically controlled by the Republicans and it basically is
controlled by the Republican appointees, so we have the hearing before the appeals
court and the appeals court says she did nothing wrong those people dont deserve to
be reinstated they deserve to be red and that was his decision. Those people waited
ve years and all that back money they were promised gone by the stroke of a pen,
those of you who remember the Chicago Tribune strike the same thing happened we
won every case until we got to the appeals court and then we lost with a stroke of a pen.
Those people appointed and approved to senate and congress as appointees and the
decisions coming out of that court now and Im saying now because the last six months
you have three major decisions that affect everybody in this room, one was the Santa
Barbara situation and the reason it affects us is because they are fellow union it
emboldens other publishers and companies to come after us and know they can get
away with it they pulled back the situation he had a posting requirement that all
nonunion employers had to post that the employees have the right to join the union,
post it,nonunion people you have the right to join the union and all the courts ruled no
you have to take them down and the LRB have no right to tell you to do that. Okay, so
take it another step all the recess appointments because the Republicans didnt want
these ve members of the board in Washington to control the LRB like the supreme
judges in fact there are only two left because the others terms expired so the President
normally appoints approved by the Senate, the Senate refuses to approve that because
they want a dysfunctional National Regulations Board so the President calls a recess
appointment when supposedly the Senate is not in session and like has been done for
hundreds of years in this country by previous Presidents he appoints three people this
supreme court said you leave it you dont have any right to do that so those three
judges now are gone and now they also say that all the action has taken in the past
years by the NRB are null and void. Thats astounding, stuff like this never ever
happened before never happened now although I didnt see it but some of the delegates
told me that they just heard that the Republicans are going to submit a bill to defund
because they dont have the ve board members in place as the head of the LRB they
cant function so then lets defund it and take the money away completely. Now this
affects us, it affects us if you are in contract talks or the employer is trying to post
conditions on you, your save guard is that if you go to the NRB and you say youre not
at impasse you le a charge. The Labour Board you either live or die under those
conditions Im just bringing this home to you, this is what they are doing, they are
blocking everything and Obama is trying to appoint new federal judges but he cant
because the Republicans and Tea Partyers they have a right to libuster and under law
they just simply say Im going to libuster and then it blocks it. You got Tom Perez who
is the nominee to the Secretary of Labour hes a friend actually of Teamsters[applause]
his father died when he was a youngster and he was taken in by a Teamster family who
helped raise him so he has a connection to the Teamsters union, but Senator
McConnell blocked it, the minority leader at the senate. He put a block on it, now the
guy is a little to right wing and I wouldnt trust him and thats all I got to say. The right
wing agenda in Right to Work is growing, its always been there but its growing. Youve
seen just recently and you talk about Michigan, the year before was Indiana, Ohio was
able to defeat it and these battles are fought at a state level were the state takes control
of the Governor and both houses once they have that control they immediately pass
legislation because they control all the votes they dont care what the people think, to
have Right to Work and they can do this, and they are doing it. In addition what theyre
doing when they cant get Right to Work they go and they say we want payroll
protection they sounds like hey man I want payroll protection to, payroll protection
means no dues check off thats the Tea Party Right to Work those words for no check off
you take away the check offs, cut off our money supply, cut off our connection to the
members, cant function and they know that. Again its all done and they know that,
[acknowledges Laura] and they can do this if they can control the local politics they may
not be able to control the overall state for red or blue in a presidential election but they
can control the local elections and thats what theyre looking to do now. They know
they cant knock off the President so theyll concentrate on controlling and try to control
the senate and house on a national level but denitely control it on a state level which is
also very bad for us if you dont pay attention. Laura, better yet when Im done ask the
question and they want you to use the microphone. So you got to again think how is
this going to affect me, what am I going to do? you need to get involved, you need to
get involved politically you need to educate yourself and educate your members your
family your friends and you have to talk about and when you talk about it you get into
ghts and arguments with your family and friends because thats just the way it is, you
have a lot of these people who are going to argue with you and theyre just as
passionate as you are. So please get involved, ght, argue do what you believe in. The
other thing that is kind of interesting is they are willing to do whats necessary to win
their cause, talk about the Koch brothers last year in Phoenix they held a meeting with
key Conservative, Republicans and the Tea Party representatives and the meeting was
about trying to project their message better and they said we got to do it by controlling
the media this was a an article in the New York Times, the Koch brothers are now trying
to buy the Tribune company they are trying to do what they talked about Tribune Co.
only owns the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, the Baltimore Sun, and a number of other
publications,small publications a number of them in Florida if they can control the local
media they could help elect more Tea Party or Republicans to state ofces which again
can cause us problems and thats what they want to do. They are not buying the paper
because they want to protect the freedom of the press they want to control the freedom
of the press and thats the reason why a lot of the editorial workers organized in the
Santa Barbara News Press to begin with, because the publisher there tried to control
the fredom of the press. So, this whole thing gets kind of spread out and important all
Im trying to do is just make you all aware of this stuff because its going to affect you it
does affect you. We have to do what we have to do, we have to stand up strong, we
have to ght the good ght we cannot quit even though we can get depressed and
peeved of maybe but you got to stay strong and get involved; vote, generate money
where you can politically, join Drive...Teamster Political Action committee; all this stuff is
important. The good news is Im nished! [laughter and applause].
Joe Inemer: I would like Laura and anyone else who has questions to come upto the
microphone[inaudible].
George Tedeshci: All right to be honest out here I was asked and again they gave me
this, but this is my report anyways. Laura?
Laura Wanless L568N: Why arent the Teamsters organizing a march on Washington?
We do it in other States why not in Washington?
George Tedeschi: I dont know the answer to that but Ill tell you what I do know; the
Gen. President is probably one of and Im not saying and Im not saying he is but he is
one of the most active, aggressive union presidents that has supported working families
and has attacked the Republican Tea Party base wherever he can. I dont why a march
on Washington has not been organized its above my level. Theres a lot of things I
would like to see happen but its above my level and they just dont happen but you
make suggestions and talk to people and it goes where it goes just like you talk to me
about it. I dont have the authority to do but I do know that the Gen. President is
relentless in getting Obama elected getting good politicians elected and ghting for just
causes. When we had Right to Work in these different States he was there, with the
problems in Wisconsin he was there and he does get involved, I mean given that the
guy is a workaholic its really his passion though he represents everybody too I think its
his passion is his political arena. Anybody else have any questions? Guy with the short
pants?
John Heffernan NY2N: Not much of a question just a comment George you havent
lost his touch, you said a lot of informative things and thank you, and let me thank you
and all the ofcers; You mentioned the strikes and fortunate to prevail in New York in
1991, but one of the main reasons we were able to win besides the strategies and you
guys know we had a session here many years ago when we turned the microphones off
and we told you what happened from the other side but one of the reasons that we won
was because of the Conference George the monies from the American Newspaper
Conference and all the Locals who sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to New York
so we could win that strike and shared strategies with us that actually helped Pittsburgh
[George: I was going to mention Pittsburgh...background] Sonney and Patty and took
that same thing and then of course Jack Howe and Detroit but I just wanted to make
that comment and Thank you. Felt like old times with you up here like this and look at
the turn out we have and God bless the Conference[applause].
George Tedeschi: Thank you John, and while you were up here speaking I thing about
the same as you I mean Pittsburgh was the other place where we won that was
basically the only two strikes really that we had that we won. Detroit we didnt win, we
always ght the good ght its the bottom line but Pittsburgh and good memories of
Sonny and Patty the Shannon boys are always in our thoughts clearly. Yes?
Steve Ryan L543 Omaha: I would just like to thank you and the ofcers of the GCC for
getting us not going into that direct Teamsters portion of it; just so everybody knows
basically I was told that if you had not stepped in on our behalf that the locals were
going to be divided up and placed in straight Teamster locals in your area so I
appreciate that; The Teamster local in our area is basically for truck drivers and they
dont represent any printing companies and that so I think that would have been not a
good thing for any of us and DC2 so I appreciate what youve done and thank you.
George Tedeschi: Thank you Brother, but it was also because once we did take over
the trusteeship, it was the delegates and the staff representatives of DC2 your 5 staff
representatives Nick and Tom Jolley also that demonstrated the resolve of producing
great representation and protecting all the members all your contracts get done on time.
there were no decertications and they handled all the grievances and arbitrations we
were winning, everything went forward we even had a couple of organizing campaigns
that not only we won but we got rst time contracts with [applause heard from next
room]even theyre cheering us[laughter].
Rick Montesano L432 San Diego: In regards to the Santa Barbara issue what is the
Internationals position and what is the next step?
George Tedeschi: The next step is the Supreme Court of the United States, when we
got the decision from the Appeals Court I had a meeting with our general council Peter
Laff and because Ira Kotlieg who is the council in the Los Angeles area that we are
dealing with in handling all the legal matters for Santa Barbara and getting them as far
as they got we had a conference call and the decision was #1 that the NRB was not
appealing they have a right to appeal, they decided not to appeal and we decided not to
appeal, we felt that the chances of winning that were just about zero, its extremely
expensive to do even to just go through the process if you dont appeal it and also we
had some consultation with some other International Unions that are involved in the
newspaper industry that have editorial workers and they concurred with our assessment
and our decision and they thought that was the best way to handle it at this point. I have
a meeting with those individuals that got terminated along with Ira and Marty and some
of the other staff who have been involved John Perraulta, Doug Manakowski from the
Teamsters union in a couple of weeks in Santa Barbara to explain all this to those
people personally and to thank them on behalf of the GCC the commitment and the
sacrice that they made in trying to unionize and we have stood with them for all these
years, we funded them, we paid all the bills and we kept them alive as long as we
could. Anyone else have any questions? [Inaudible crowd noise] Hearing none, I will
again thank you for your time thank you for your patience and I really appreciate being
here[applause].
Joe Inemer: What I would like to do now is after coffee break I would like to have some
of the Committees ready to give their reports so we dont get jammed up tomorrow as a
lot of people have ights to catch and immediately after coffee break John Agenbroad
will put on his presentation for the local pension. Thank you very much George.
Delegate before we break[inaudible crowd noise] At this time Id like to bring up John
Agenbroad.
John Agenbroad: Good morning brothers and sisters I extend fraternal greetings on
behalf of the pension fund trustees, Im glad to be here this morning Im not going to
give you a power point presentation and give you all the different benets of your local
pension fund Id rather talk to you on where we are and where we are going etc. etc. so
Ill give you a different avor than I normally do. A lot of you sitting in the audience are
already in the local pension fund some of you sit on the sidelines thinking of joining your
local pension fund others havent taken that dip yet. Your local pension fund is not
exempt from all the other things going on across the country, obviously we are not one
hundred percent funded but we like to be, but if you look at the fund if you look at
dened benet plans across the nation there are a very very few that are 100% funded.
I do see some, California last week all the big boys so to speak were in talking about
this new bill that Pomeroy has got before the congress etc. and we talked about it and
all the people that were there, there were seven different pension funds that were a
100% funded, seven, and there were at least 600 pension funds represented there so
that tells you the situation. Now how is your Local going to deal with that kind of
situation, well one, you heard Matt Wenner speak yesterday about the ERF, the ERF,
the JPT, the MPF, Local 1L , DC2, 401A, 13N the list goes on, on in the GCC network
about what you have to do and the Taff-Hartley multi-employer a list of things you dont
have a lot of tools you can use because youre bound by the Pension Protection Act of
2006 later revised in 08 and 09 by the government any think the government has its
hands on and for you Canadian brothers in the United States anyway it gets screwed
up. So your local pension fund, heres where it is unique in so many different ways
opposed to the others, the other pension funds served us well for years and years and
years unfortunately our industry because of technology has killed us especially in the
newspaper I dont think Im preaching to the choir here newspaper industry is probably
devastated more by technology than any other one and we have about 500 members in
DC3 in newspapers across the map so we should share that pain and we walk that pain
everyday, but because of technology in your industry and the printing industry more and
more plants have went down and less and less people are doing so much more than
what they were before and we are not getting any help in congress, every time we get a
Bill to go before us and try to get another committee to try and help us on certain things
the Republicans block it and it never gets out of committee and then it gets very hard,
an example is of Pomeroy [inaudible] Bill years ago which we did some partitioning,
allowed a trustee to do something would also double what the PBGC gives us , if you go
ask for their help pension funds would be lasting a whole lot longer than they are today
but we didnt get a lot of help unfortunately so we are playing the hand we were dealt It
was alright to the auto industry which Im all for AIG and others their bail out but it wasnt
alright to give us our bailout so unfortunately we are where we are, but the overall
pension plan gives you a different avor even though we are not were we want to be in
terms of funding we do not have employee withdrawal liability which allows us to go out
and get new blood in the fund its no different than your union, your union will die if you
dont organize you got to have new members, thats what pays the salaries and keeps
the engine going. The pension funds are the same but pension funds are a little different
the union treasury we try to have money to make sure you are able to ght the ght in
the pension four years mortalities over it, so it gives you time theres other funds I talked
about earlier that doesnt have that time because they 2 year quarters was their
mandate if you got a surplus you got to cut benets in 2 years if you got a decit you
have to if you got a surplus you got to add increase of benets and if you have a decit
you have to decrease benets and as a 2 year quarter so thats when theyre out of luck
so we can buy time and do things and get new members in and thats why we feel we
know that fund can be saved. We are getting new Teamster members in and fortunately
2000 plus IBT teamsters have joined this fund since 2011but when you look around the
country Mount Morris have 600 members in their local pension and they closed out
other pension funds as well and when you look at what Quadgraphics has done by
getting out of our pension funds that scenario has really crippled our to add value to
those 2000 people now where would we be without those 2000 people, we would really
be in harms way. So we are trying to do that and the trustees are being creative, we
have a great board of trustees, great staff and we think now that George Tedeschi is
working and Bob Lacey and others are working real hard to help us with the Teamster
world bringing you to the table that will buy us some time were the only pension fund of
our kind its a 501C18 which there is nobody else like it there used to be two other
pension funds and they have since merged with us L1L and the photoengravers pension
fund out of Washington, DC. So how are we going to deal with this? Well were going to
deal with this in a lot of different ways number one were going to be deliberate we are
going to use our actuaries to show us different ways and ways which we can deal now
obviously the more you come down and join a fund the less impact thats going to have
on our fund in terms of any kind of benets changes we have to make if and when, but
the beauty of the thing is we bring people in, employers are not going to ght you, they
can ght if they want you to stay in the 401Ks but they are going to have a tough time
on this dened benet, there is not a greater feeling to me as a union leader and as
Chairman of the Board and a bunch of guys speaking in the back and others who have
said keep that International pension fund going, thats the greatest benet I ever had
thats what years in this industry ghting grievances and negotiations and all the horror
stories on safety and health on the job and plant closings etc.etc. its nice to hear
something like I would not have the life I have now if it wasnt for pension funds. Your
local pension fund because its run by local trustees who walk the walk and talk the talk
they know that whatever we do we are doing it for you but the beauty of this fund
compared to the other funds as I said is a number of things but one is you get to vote on
it, in those other pension funds the trustees have complete authority to make cuts
whatever it is you know what happened to the ERF 1% accrual, JPT 1% accrual MPF
60% accrual and the list goes on and what we had to do to save the plan for the short
time we can save them. This fund we were able to that in steps their local pension fund
even though the funding is not what it is we have a very stringent funding process we
use the same 20% accrual for smoothing that the other pension plans use our funding is
never higher than it is now so if you are sitting on the sidelines waiting to come in right
now or your accounts have told you maybe this accounts to rich well the bottom line is
actuaries have looked at this fund and its not to rich if we get the numbers obviously if
we dont get the numbers we are going to have to
make changes but whatever that end result is that change you will have a place in that
and you have a veto pen so to speak youll be able to vote on that when and its not a
fty percent plus 1 majority it requires two thirds of the people in the plan retirees get a
vote you dont hear that at the IBT world though retirees get a vote and actives get a
vote the only ones who do not get a vote is vested and I really want to clear on this to
the communicator but most of you vested people are people who got expelled so there
are not a lot of sympathy with us for a while and then well vote but our actives and our
retirees because they share in the pain and share in the gain so we want them to be a
part of this and we end up voting at the end of the day whatever we are going to do we
are going to it. The other thing and probably the most passionate thing for me as a
union leader for forty-ve plus years it gives you what we havent gotten lately it gives
you a tie to the union you know what George said this morning King George I call him
all the time and you all have probably called him King George a time or two but he said
it like it is we have to do what we have to do and when we have to do it, the
International Pension Fund is your tie to the union ask Gary Foreman in the back
Indiana went Right to Work about two years ago how many members you lost Gary?
zero right,okay L508 in Michigan they just went Right to Work March 27 the people in
your local pension fund in the Right to Work states it gives you a tie because they want
to stay in the union unlike in the Right to Work states or unlike Beckam directors and
nancial core members if youre in the bargaining unit the employer negotiates a
contract with you, you are a free writer you get the gravy you get whatever pension fund
is as a part of the bargaining unit because of the [inaudible]fund but your local however
is not in [inaudible] fund the only way you can stay in and participate in this fund and
that is one reason why Bob said yesterday about the CGX horror story those people sat
in their local pension fund the whole time under implemented conditions it gives you a
tie to the union you must be a one hundred percent active dues paying member you
cant be a Beckam director, you cant be a nancial core, you cant ride free you are
either a part of this or not a part of this, thats the organizing tool you go and talk to Dale
Harrold or Robert Kelly in Chattanooga, and the list goes on and on of the Right to Work
states you will see that those people maintain their membership because of their local
pension fund. So I guess my message to you is help yourself and help your members
by getting involved knowing something and I dont want to take a bunch of time on this
but I will talk to outside or Ill come into your local and do a presentation, Ill send you a
DVD we have every kind of thing we have our website you name we got everything on
this local pension fund to try and get this message and the communications out to you.
I would however like to recognize DC2 years past DC2 didnt want anything to do with
our pension fund it was because they had a 401A plan and were in the ERF etc.etc.
they never came to the dance so to speak, since the last six months DC2 is getting
ready for having a trustee on the local pension fund they have put over three hundred
members into the local pension fund [inaudible] and other plants across the country so I
commend DC2 and Clark Ritchie and Denny Kobattas leadership and the rest of all you
folks you are doing a great job and I dont need to say anymore on this because George
said it all. Let me make sure I didnt leave anything out here, bargaining units, full dues,
not lost any Right to Work, free riders, as I said about the entire union we lost a
lot..theres an attack on workers today and it wasnt by accident we whittled away our
health plans, we whittled away our education plans, chopped our pension plans and
what that battle was that they didnt care about taking the benets away from you as
much as they cared about disarming you because if unions dont have dues paying
members coming in they cant give money to the cause or a drive for others if were
going to ght the ght weve got to have money to ght it you cant do it without it
otherwise and they know that if they cripple us the line of defense for workers across
this country is shot so when you have a pension fund you need to get our benets back
that what we have fought for all through the years the old horses and dinosaurs like me
we get a nice pension and its you young folks in here we are ghting for now because
you should have the same as we have and then some. So Ill leave you with that
thought and I do believe my time is ....up! Thank you[applause].
Joe Inemer: Does anyone have any questions on the local pension fund? please step
up to the mic. Name and local please.
Melvin Prailow L1C: Morning brothers and sisters, just a real quick question we work
for the Federal Government we have savings plans and we have a different programs
similar to this, my question is it may be misinformation but I would like it cleared up.
How do I get involved with this and do I need to have a certain amount of my
membership to be involved with this to have to be included in it and if so why cant I just
join it myself I mean this is a great thing this is a great program and my family would
and I mean I want my kids to go to college and stuff and I would like to help them go to
college so I guess thats just my question how do I join individually?
John Agengbroad: I think I know what youre asking so let me try and answer that for
you and let me know if I dont. We have members in the public sector in Washington,
DC in L285 and those members are in and they are all, what this allows us to do the law
will allow them to join but they still have to be a dues paying members now what weve
done is years ago and those of you who have been around along time will remember
this you could not bring people into your local pension fund unless the whole local came
in but now with local trustees we said its hard to get your wife or husband to agree one
hundred percent of the time so lets liberalize the rules so that shop by shop well that
increased the membership then because technology wiped us out some more we said
alright lets go by segment by segment so as long as you get a segment, a shop, a local
will allow you to come in now the reason we cant do it on a individual basis is because
it creates what they call adverse selection and all the old timers would join which would
then make the fund not healthy so you got to bring a group in because usually when you
bring group in you have some thirty year olds, forty year olds and some fty year olds
and then the actuaries say they are solid because you are not bringing in a bunch of
seventy-ve year olds. You have to be protective of the fund on a long term basis and
you cant do that if you do individual basis.
Melvin Prailow L1C: Just to follow up you said a fraction I dont know whether you
said a fraction or a section, but how many do I need?
John Agenbroard: Lets just give you an example lets say that lets use the newspaper
Richard and John Heffernan had this issue when we were dealing with their local
pension fund they had y boys, pressmen and apprentices those are segments so lets
say the apprentice group comes in then they all got to come in because youre
apprentices and you have adverse selection so you bring the whole segment in and you
get your money back if you leave early and the older guy will get a real bang for the
buck because if they go its all based on what the last census bureau is so they are
going to get more out of their fund than they paid into it when they go. We can get real
creative on how we do it but we just cant do it on a one on one basis. If you want to
see me Ill give you a card and Ill send you all kinds of stuff and Ill be glad to do that.
Glad to have you.
Melvin Prailow L1C: Okay thanks.
John Agenbroad: Any other questions or comments I dont want to tie up your time but
obviously its the talk of the union and I could talk about this all day.
Bob Blennau L406 Long Island: I would just like to say we have been in its since 1989
and its a great fund and everyone has good things to say about it but being faced with
layoffs I have a couple of questions can I still make the payments into the local even
though Im out of the industry and I think you may have answered that before?
John Agenbroard: Let me tell you how that works and my attorney questioned me on
this one the other day he agreed with me, we know why you do it forever and years ago
it used to be forever prior to 1987. In 1987 was when we were able to start writing off
our taxes prior to1987 you couldnt write off so the IRS would only want us to use the
one year rule we were able to get a two year rule in there and so when you get laid off
for whatever reason as long as you maintain your union dues or whatever they charge
you you can pay into it for two years now the beauty of that is if you go back one hour in
the industry you have another two years as long as you made that contribution within
that two years it extends it again you get dont get vested you stay active. So we can get
creative but you have to have that one hour, two hours or one day just to get it rolling
again unlike the other pension funds where you have to have a two week contribution to
make sure you dont have a break in service.
Bob Blennau: So I can contribute up to two years?
John Agenbroard: But you have to maintain your membership in the union and the
reason why is because we are saying you cant be in this unless youre a dues paying
member okay so if we didnt have you belong to the union we would lose that and we
would rather have free riders jumping on our plate and eating our gravy and we cant
have that happen
Bob Blennau: And we also know that we get a hundred percent of our money back
[John: as long as you leave the industry that youre in] If I was to get laid off do I have to
take that money out or can I let it sit there and when Im sixty-ve collect it?
John Agenbroad: You can vest your money and heres the beauty of that as long as
you are in good standing with your union when you vested your money circumstances
change so lets say you are ready to retire later on but then something happens and you
blow lets say you go into a business and you put half in you can go back and get your
money because at the time you got out you werent expelled you were in good standing
honorary withdrawal or whatever you could go back and get your money, its laying there
for you to be able to draw at fty-ve or sixty or sixty-ve its your money its vested.
John Laspina: Im a guest of L406. Id like to speak on behalf of the inter local and to
President George Tedeschis credit he tried to get that system into our pressroom
several years before we actually did get into it and I wish we had gotten into it then but
for various reasons we dint, but anyway all I want to say is as a retiree theres a couple
of things I get is Medi-care and my secondary, my secondary happens to be AARP that
cheque that I get every month on the rst of the month from the Inter Local Pension
Fund absorbs the AARP and it was one of the best decisions I ever made and Im not
sorry for it as I know its going to be there for the rest of my life and I happened to take
the spousal thing and that makes me feel a little bit better, but anyway its a great plan,
its something that everybody should be involved in and wish more people would
because then I know they would make some changes and you could make it better than
it is right now so I urge everybody to think about it and when you get back to your Local
do what you got to do but just keep it in the back of your mind that this money is there
and its guaranteed by us which is the most important part of the whole thing. Thank you
very much.
John Agenbroad: Thanks John[applause]. Hey John next to King George youre the
best shooter we have from L406 thats why we put your pictures in the brochures.
Steve Ryan L543 Omaha: The brother from L406 New York, I just want to get some
clarication on the answer that you gave to him pertaining to the two years extension.
We had a brother that was in that situation and he got the two year extension and then
he nished the two year extension and so lets say he went to work in Columbus here
they are hiring would he be able to get back in?
John Agenbroad: Once youre in the fund you can get back in its called total portability
to go from shop so thats another [inaudible] but in the other funds you dont go into a
shop lets say in Columbus dispatch it may not be in one of 2Ns shops then you get
vested in Columbus dispatch and but if its in 2N then you would have the portability
once youre in you have the portability to go anywhere in the industry.
Steve Ryan L543: Okay he wasI think you know about that particular situation but
anyways he was our VP and he was terminated and got a different job as a bus driver in
a different industry but he was allowed the two year extension thanks to George
Tedeschi over here but now that Im nding out that they are actually hiring in other
places I should be able to go back and tell hey that you can get a hold of the guy from
Columbus and if they hire you then youll be able to get back in.
John Agenbroad: Yes, he can get back in the pension but he cant go back and make
retroactive contributions because the money you put into the fund has to be on
registered earnings you earn in the industry, but you can get back in it again but you
cant pay any retro back.
Steve Ryan L543: Okay, thanks.
John Agenbroad: Other questions or comments? Yes Jim?
Jim Earley L13N Detroit: John, I want to thank you because this helped us as you
mentioned in L13N when the company would not even negotiate anymore into the
Local pension so they froze our local pension and this was a life line for us to stay alive
and to get our members in one of the valuable parts of, like I come in here yesterday
putting together the packages for these new members is that they can get in to a
pension fund and that they have to be a union member so this is one of the pluss to
doing that I only brag about this one every time that I get a chance I thank you for
everything that you do in helping us having a pension, thank you.
John Agenbroad: Thank you I appreciate it [applause].
John Heffernan NY2N: John you know how interested we are and you came out to our
local and I have to say to all the locals here if John comes out to your local or your
shop, or your chapel meetings or your union meetings, he had a hell of meeting with us
audience. How many people are in the pension fund actively working and how many
people are collecting benets thats my question for you?
John Agenbroad: Right now theres about 9200 paying into the fund and 19,000
retirees and there in lies the problem weve got but the disparity was getting better until
we started losing four or ve big shops again but thats the key we can bring people into
this fund because the other funds you cant because employer will withdraw liability
because theyre under funded, so we need to bring new blood in here were just not
bringing it fast enough. What really is dire to my heart and George can tell you this we
had 6500 people from Hostess coming into this fund could you imagine what that would
have been we would be closer with actives to retirees and eleven different unions, every
union voted for it but one and when the one didnt vote for it 18,500 people lost their
jobs in Twinkies and all other places all over the country now so thats the difference.
We are trying to work on it because when you have actuaries or accountants look at it
theyre going to say listen theres no way you can make this work because its disparity
but if you have 10,000 people in the GCC world that is a ton of people in the Teamster
world its nothing and they have pockets of thousands and thousands of people and
when you go out and you sell something and now Ive 25,000 actives and 19,000
retirees so thats what we are really working on to bring that number up and the
protection for the members the protection for you and yeah we brought you into this
pension fund and were going to be around at the end of the day we can save this fund
but they didnt vote on it its not like the other pension funds were you just make the cuts
and you have to eat them, we vote on everything thats in this fund and thats the union
way thats the best, so I appreciate your comments on this John.
Anything else I dont want to wear myself out hear tie up the meetings but pensions are
very important to us.
George Tedeschi: The point that John makes about bringing new blood in, the GCC we
kind of maxed out on the locals that want to participate and still some locals that want to
participate and probably eventually they will come in, but for what ever reasons they are
still taking time to watch and decide what they want to do. We are making a very serious
concerned effort to bring in the IBT Locals we are now educating the leadership within
the IBT of the importance of participating in this local fund because they have the same
with some of our funds in fact some of the their funds are in much worse shape than our
pension funds national pension funds and they are all looking for alternatives. At the
recent General Executive Board meeting a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas we had a
speaker come in and talk to about this topic at the conclusion of the meeting and the
discussions I talked about the GCC meeting with the speaker there and he explained
about this one of a kind fund the countries should have and maybe the unions have.
Now the Teamsters, because were all Teamsters now has the use of this fund to
neglect unionization of it is not a smart move I talked about being smart making smart
decisions, theres a lot of politics being involved, theres a lot of skepticism about being
involved but when people start to look at it and understand it the x here is so simple if
people go in the fund which is in their best interest the fund is actually very solvent
because the problem we are having in the industry is our membership base keeps
shrinking, the participation in the fund keeps shrinking so you have to make the benets
solely on investment money rather than new people coming into the fund. This fund
year we only had 19,000 people join benets we have a million two or three hundred
Teamsters that can come into this fund if 10,000 came in which is nothing were funded
just by contributions, if 100,000 come in your funded for the next decades just by
contributions not counting the investment return. So this is you know is something that
we really believe in but there is skepticism because people are saying you know the
benet is so rich can we afford to do this and the answer is if people come in now with
us and if not worse case scenario well adjust the benets so the fund stays solvent and
then when the people come in then because they say its a solvent fund we will increase
the benets again, but we hope we dont have to go through that process but its in
motion were working on it John is putting a lot of time and effort into it as well as bunch
of us Bob, myself and others so were working at it but its important that whatever we
can get out of the GCC to because the number game right now is critical. Thank
you[applause].
Frank Golden L458M Chicago: Good morning, Ive been in this fund and will be
approaching my thirtieth year pretty soon, paying into in this fund and I recommend
anyone thats not in it to ask any questions that you can, talk with John and he can do
presentations. We were one of the founding locals in this group, we go back to the
amalgamated lithographers L4 and I would tell everybody to please research this for
your membership. After we took in the Tribune guys we and thats my next move is to
bring in 150 pressmen into this fund as soon as possible. Thank you.
John Agenbroad: Thank you Frank I appreciate that[applause].
Joe Inemer: Im going to let you speak but theres some pressing business and thats
the newspaper committee as that meeting is going to be 3-4 hours[audience:well that
can wait].
John Agenbroad: He can be the last comment.
Garry Foreman Indianapolis L17M: Im just going to echo pretty much what the
previous speakers have been saying. The goal of everyone of us should be to strive to
get pensions, and when we retire the vehicles that we have available to us with the
Inter-Local and the other pension plans and most of the plants now have 401Ks there is
no reason why you cant retire and make as much retired and that ought to be the goal
as you did working so you dont have to miss a lick when you go into retirement. The
Inter-Local is a pension plan not a 401K, I always say 401K its a nice vehicle its a
savings plan its not a pension and I thank God for Inter-Local pension plan and all the
pensions that I do have they all add up and they make it and they are there and if you
dont utilize them youre missing the boat and this is something that you dont have to go
to the employer and negotiate putting extra dollars in, you make the decision as a group
whereas you go to the bargaining table and try to get more money into your pension
plans and thats as hard as hell to do now with the shape that all the pensions are in
here you control it. Thank you[applause].
John Agenbroad: I appreciate you all listening and theres one thing Ill leave you were
working hard on your behalf this Board of Trustees is all union people so weve all lived
these horror stories that your living and we think about that when we make changes and
youre a part of that change you have the nal word at the end of the day so Ill leave
you with that thanks for your time and I appreciate you listening to me[applause].
Joe Inemer: Anybody has any additional questions John will be around at the end of
the session, so please talk to him because it is a great pension plan and L16 is part of it
and its the best plan we ever had because our plan was frozen a few years back and if
it wasnt for the Inter-Local we would be in deep trouble. Kevin do you want to speak?
Kevin Toomey L3N Boston: Just I would be remised as I was reminded by our
esteemed Sargeant at Arms that he was not on the guest list on those hand outs we
passed out so if you could please add Tom Donnellys name it would save me a lot of
grief and Id be back on Toms Christmas card list, thank you[laughter].
Joe Inemer: Right before I let the Newspaper Committee go because John has a long
agenda today I do want to do the fty/fty draw prior. I want to take one second of your
time to think you know Memorial Day is coming up and you think of Veterans John
Agenbroad is right here three time Purple Heart veteran who served his
country[applause]. Also I would like to ask Mike Heines son Thomas, Thomas was
severely injured two years ago serving the country overseas, please stand up and give
Thomas a hand[applause]. Im very active with the military as a civilian and I know what
these guys go through and they need to be appreciated very much and I thank you very
much and Thomas would you like to come up here and pull the fty/fty winning ticket.
You want to shake it up! #557 gets a total of $268 [inaudible crowd noise]
Let me check that ticket out $268 [applause] I mentioned Peter donated $100 yesterday
and $100 he donated today.[inaudible crowd noise and laughter]
Delegate: Do we have time for any Local reports?
Joe Inemer: Im just going to let the Newspaper Committee go[inaudible crowd noise].
What report are you going to give?
Delegate: my local report, Mike Laspina L406, As I reported last year the changes in
the pressroom at Newsday told us about they used to have a ten press operation went
to seven and last year they informed us they were going to go to a three press operation
they are going to combine presses they are going to put one press on top of another
press and they did that for the whole calendar year of 2012 and they completed it in
December 2012 so they are only a three press operation, 96 pages full colour. At the
time they informed us we were going to lose 47 jobs in the pressroom at the end of the
project they were able to bring commercial work in and so they saved 11 jobs. The
commercial work I think is the way to go I know Phoenix is having problems and they
might be getting presses that do commercial work now and the folders. I dont have faith
in the newspaper no more I mean its shrinking and its going away and I dont know
what its going to look like but if you can get commercial work in we gave them
commercial manning which means that whatever you want to put on there you put on
there but if the product and they want the product to look good, they want the product to
be quality theyre going to have to put men on it thats what we told them we have a little
less men but we put men back to work and we saved 11 jobs by bringing this work in
and its working and its different than what were used to there are 64 changeover in
this work thats regionalized so the pressmen are running up two ights of stairs now to
put plates on every 10,000 copies and the press is shutdown. Its hard work but its
work and the people that we saved believe me they are thankful we did it even though
theyre working harder. So what we are doing now is were in the middle of negotiations
with well not in negotiations were talking to the company and President Tedeschi
mentioned
he sits in with us on negotiations the company wants to do away with single copy sales
as its being done now with full-time drivers as they said its hard to be a leader in this
business these days, 20-25 years ago it was a nice job right now its difcult because all
they want to do is take and with the single copy sales we have to sit back and as
President look I have Bobby Blennau here hes the Chairman and he might be affected
by this if we do it and its about 48 jobs but we told the company, if they do it we want
things for it and what we want is whomever is doing it they are going to beL406
members. They agreed to that, they said thats ne we can work something out with
that. We need a severance package thats better than what we have now and an
enhanced package so we can get this thing ratied and people who are going to be
leaving 30 plus years on the job get something and I think we are going to able to get a
2 year severance package out of it and I think we are going to get the rest of the local a
contract with raises 401Ks.[applause] So its ...look Bobby, Andrew and Eddie and the
Ofcers of transportation they tried very hard, they tried to come up with things and its
just obvious that the company wants to do it this way and we tried and we tried but to no
avail and I mean look it is what it is and we have to sit back and say we are going to
lose 50 guys and they are here 25 years and Bobby and Andrew who we know sit on
the Executive Board might be one of them but I think you know like George said as
leaders you have to look and take the tough task that it is right now and sit back and
look at the whole picture and say are they bullshitting, well you know I just...its funny
the electronic part of this business is here I mean the internet, I phones, I pads and we
were just told at the business and the Conference just yesterday Marty reported that
were not going to print the minutes anymore and we will send it out on email and thats
something that all the companies are doing now when ever they could and whenever
they could get this on computer instead of in print they will do it so its hard and its
something you know non of us like but it is a problem that we are all facing so thats my
report. Thank you[applause].
Joe Inemer: We have one more presentation to put on and then I believe that will be at
for the day. The Newspaper Committee will meet here we have more rooms on the
other side of the pool if any other committee wants to meet and be prepared rst thing in
the morning to give your reports. With that Id like to present our Sergeant at Arms
Jamie McElravey and he will present a new system in the newspaper department
Jamie,
Jamie McElravey L128N/DC3: The evolution of the newspaper, I see everybody has a
copy its a three round plate cylinder and the folder cut-off is I believe 15 1/3 instead of
the traditional 22 . So its a lot smaller and 33% increase in speed you can go to
pressline.com and et the video and it explains a lot better than I will. The folder is a little
crazy its a double pin cylinder jaw folder which I dont think a lot of us have use for
different from the traditional 3:2 folder but it transitions into a smaller cut-off and with
that being said the markings up in Columbus and it seems to be a hit with their
community so I dont know if thats something we are going to have to look forward to a
a group its here its in town now. We lost Cincinnati, they shut the doors we lost 54
members I believe and Tony Rapp and all the guys gave em hell but it just didnt work
and we are printing the Enquirer in Columbus. Its hard to do their job when theyre not
working anymore I reported that last year along with everything else but we need help in
Columbus I appreciate you guys in the Columbus Communicator and everything at the
last minute we got a lot of calls from Chicago and Jersey and a few other places. So if
you have anybody that needs work we are searching Indianapolis is hiring we have a
yboy program back in tact we have helpers now we call them hyenas because they run
in packs but we do need some help so if you guys know anybody out there Ill give you
my number and you can give us a call in Columbus but I ont bother sending this re[port
to the newspaper committee youve got a copy and its something to think about,
appreciate your time[applause].
[Inaudible crowd noise].
Joe Inemer: By-Law committee will report. I have notice that the Organizing Committee
and a short report from Marty so I cant turn them down with that well do the By-Law
report.
Mike Heine: The committee met this morning and we have two changes I will let my
able bodied wordsmith Gary Foremam read the report to you.
Gary Foreman: The committee met on Tuesday May 21st we should consider two by-
law changes:
The rst one was pretty much housekeeping the elimination with reference to the
Stereotyper VP its on page 5 article 3 section 1, page 6 article 3 section 4, and article 3
section 5a. and its basically the committee voted to recommend the adoption to
eliminating any reference to Stereotyper VP and I so move Mr. Chairman.
Kevin Toomey: Second.
Joe Inemer: On the rst by-law change, read it out again. [Gary asks where were you].
Ok well take a vote on that.
Garry Foreman: It was to eliminate any reference to Stereotyper VP in the by-laws.
Joe Inemer: You heard the motion, a motion to accept the by-law as was presented.
Frank Golden: So move
Dave Tomaszewski: Second
Joe Inemer: Questions? All those in favor signify by saying aye{crowd respond with
aye]. The ayes have it. Now the second bl-law change.
Gary Foreman: The committee also met and considered to change the by-laws page 2
article 6 section 2 to amend the per capita wanting to increase it to $1.75 per member
per year and the committee recommends adoption and I so move Mr. Chairman.
Joe Inemer: You heard the motion do we have a seconder[Ron Pineda second from
crowd] Questions? All those in favor signify by saying aye[crowd responds aye]all those
opposed? Ayes have it thank you. That was a very difcult decision to make to keep this
Conference strong and the e-board had a lot of discussion on it.
Garry Foreman: I would move Mr. Chairman to accept this report as a whole.
Joe Inemer: A motion, second?[Marty Callaghan from the crowd] Questions? Hearing
none all those in favor signify by saying aye[crowd responds aye] Ayes have it, thank
you.[applause]. Marty Keegan are you ready to give a short report? [crowd noise] Rick
are you going to come up here too?
Marty Keegan: I appreciate the opportunity to speak. My name is Marty Keegan and I
work with the Graphic Communications Conference of the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters in Los Angeles. We talked a little bit earlier, George touched on a few things
and I want to touch on Santa Barbara real quick although the employer has sent the
letter as George stated to try to withdraw our recognition of the union we are ling
ERPs today George talked to our Attorneys and we are going to go after them we are
not walking away from Santa Barbara thats not what this is. They beat us on this thing
at DC and if you have anything that is going up to the DC Court realize that those right
wing fascias are going to cheat us down with the same Judges that attacked Obama
and said that his recent appointments are unconstitutional that court and the DC3 court
are full of these that dont care about past practice or law they are just simply up there
to push a political agenda [applause]. Next thing is as you know or may not know we
have a campaign going with 1156 nurses at Kaiser Hospital in Los Angeles who want to
become GCC members we are ghting a small association out there in Los Angeles but
we have a lot of support from the Nurses Association which is a big organization. We
have led for the election, its tied up because they are ling blocking charges against
the employer stating that the employer has been favoring us and another union over the
association but those charges are being dealt with and hopefully towards August or
September we should be in election mode. The nurses want to come here next year
they want to be a part of the GCC they want to get in every conference obviously they
wont t in every conference but Im sure you wouldnt mind a thousand nurses
here[laughter]. I know youre complaining already I can tell. [inaudible crowd noise and
laughter]. The next thing is something to do with something weve been working on for a
while and that is as you know and George mentioned in his report that the Koch
brothers are trying to buy Tribune Corporation and of course out in Los Angeles that
means the LA Times now when they buy these papers up you know and I know that the
editorial page is going to become the the whole paper and they are going to be pushing
their right wing agendas and these two brothers dont give a damn about the paper or
our unions they just want to bust us. So the community rallied last week we had over
200 people, Ronnie Pineda was one of the leaders in the rally out there from L140N
[applause] give Ronnie a hand. While out on the sidewalk holding a demonstration in
front of the people who are actually going to make the decision on were the paper gets
sold the trustees we picketed in front of their building and we are now going next week
in front of their homes in Beverley Hills and were going to picket there and were telling
them we dont want the Koch brothers to buy the LA Times but while we are out there
and this is part of the organizing campaign is that in the crowd of 200 many of the
reporters were there, they had had a meeting of their own and half of them voted to quit
the newspaper if the Koch brothers purchased the paper so our message to them was
dont quit, ght join us join the Teamsters and we will get you a contract that protects
your interests[applause]. Ricky.
Rick Putnam: I know Marty said it was going to be short and he is! Rick Putnam I work
for the GCC or George, okay. [Inaudible crowd noise]. Anyway one of the things I am
most proud to stand up here in front of you because the Newspaper Conference is one
of the most active Conferences in giving me leads to organize.[Inaudible]did know in
Joes local[applause].
Joe Inemer: Thanks to Mike Huggins and Rick Putnam they did a great job. Also I
forgot Richard Street he was also involved in it[applause].
Rick Putnam; Were doing a campaign in [inaudible] for 1500 people[inaudible]
[applause] we just did the packaging division with Rick Street working with DC3 and
their Ofcers.
All I can say is you guys right now are the most active in pursuing leads and coming
back to the International and requesting help that you pay for if you get a contact in a
shop you dont have to go [inaudible]we are here for you we work for you we will help
train you in how to do what happened at Joes local, double so lets do that in every local
in this Conference what do you say? [applause]. Keep it up and thank you.
Joe Inemer: Thank you very much. The Organizing Committee would like to make their
report now [crowd noise saying they already gave it] Ok Im sorry they already gave it.
At this point there is a recommendation that we end for the day can I get a motion
[crowd makes motion] Ok can I get a second, ok all those in favor please say aye
[crowd says aye] the ayes have it. Tomorrow well have to give everybody up hear to
give their respective committee reports and anything else that needs to be
discussed.Well give the room to the Newspaper Committee as that will probably be a
few hours meeting I guess.
John Heffernan NY2N: Mr. Chairman we will hold the Newspaper Committee right now
in this room but I wanted to remind everybody about tonight, tonight at 7 oclock we
have cocktails dinner at 7:45 so 7 oclock be out by the pool were going to have a nice
night a little Mariachi band and we have supper coming at 7:45 so please, please come.
Joe Inemer: If we have any Delegates who are bringing guests they need to pay for
their guests so see Kevin for that.
Jamie McElravey 128N: The Auditing Committee will meet out in the back hallway as
soon as we get done here.
Joe Inemer: Okay guys meeting adjourned.
Adjournment.
May 22, 2014 Meeting Minutes
Joe Inemer: Good morning brothers and sisters, can I get Tom Donnelly up to sing the
Canadian and US National anthems,[Tom Donnelly sings both anthems. [applause] ].
With the show last night the delegates, the Mariachi band, John and Ritchie, thank you
very much[applause]. On a nancial matter there are a few people who havent seen
Kevin for the dinner last night so please see him because the host local needs that
money to pay for the dinners. At this time if anybody would like to bring their reports
forward especially the Committees how about the Auditing Committee are you ready
yet? Jamie are you ready to give the auditing report at this time?
Jamie McElravey L128N/DC3: Good morning brothers and sisters, the Auditing
Committee met on Tuesday, May 21, 2013, with secretary Kevin Toomey. Committee
members in attendance were Jamie McElravey, secretary Mike DeSola, Rich Daley, Jim
Earley and Jack Noone. The Auditing Committee reviewed the nancial reports and
bank records nding everything to be in order the records reected a beginning balance
as of 5/1/2012 to be $11,163.91 with total deposits of $6,972.50 with an amount
interest totaling $1.72. With the total receipts of $6,974.22 total expenses where
$11,900.16 with an ending balance of $6,781.77 with a loss to the NANC of $6.28
resulting from the Canadian currency conversion. The Auditing Committee wishes to
extend are appreciation to the NANC Secretary/Treasurer Kevin Toomey for the
assistance and information he provides year to year to this committee to make our job
easier, thank you Kevin. This concludes the Auditing Committee report.
Joe Inemer: Do I hear a motion to accept the Auditing Committee report[John
Heffernan from the oor] Second? [Frank Golden from the oor]. Ayes have it. The
Credentials are they ready to give their report yet? Chris Lang.
Chris Lang: Morning brothers and sisters this is the Credentials Committee report the
committee met on Monday, May 20,2013 committee members were as follows: Ron
Hackett Toronto 100M, Scott Olson Milwaulkee 23N, Micheal Kolligs NY2N, Rich
Bogaski Pittsburgh 9N. Id like to give a special thanks to the committee for giving their
tireless work in drafting this report. With that being said the report is as follows: the 56th
NANC saw 43 registered delegates from 25 locals through out the United States and
Canada in addition there were 34 guests present and these guests were made up from
a contingence of GCC and IBT International which included 12 ofcers, staff and reps
and also our brothers and sisters from the CEP Canada, a special thanks goes out to
our Canadian brothers and sisters[applause]. The remaining guest were retired
members and family members. The committee would also like to thank the NY
delegates and the new delegates Matt Larsen L28N Salt Lake City, and Steve Ryan
from L543M Omaha, Nebraska[applause] welcome, glad to have you here and hope to
see you back next year. lastly the committee would like to thanks locals 2N/1SE for
hosting the 56th NANC, thank you John, Richard and Michael youve done a great job
and with that being said I would like to move for the Credentials Committee report to be
accepted as read, thanks you [second: Marty Callaghan from the oor].
Joe Inemer: All those in favor say aye [crowd responds aye] Nays? Okay the ayes
have it. Is the Newspaper Committee prepared to give their report at this time? All right,
John Heffernan from L2N/1SE.
John Heffernan NY2N: Chairman of the Newspaper Committee rst and foremost I
want to thank the delegates we had a really great meeting, it lasted several hours and
the information that was shared is invaluable. I think theres a common theme I would
like to give you this report not in a detailed version but in more of a thematic format but
rst I want to thank the delegates Louis Nicosia our recording secretary, Judy Diamond
from Toronto, George Hubert from San Diego, Denis Fournier from Montreal, Frank
Golden, Chicago, Zack Dowdy, L406, Steven Sullivan from Boston, Peter McQuaid
welcome back from Vancouver, John Webster CEP from Winnipeg welcome back, Matt
Larsen and Steve Ryan our newest guests who are delegates of the future, they
participated in the committee as well form Salt Lake and from Omaha. The bottom line
is this and it was stated by many locals, the way to go in the future is to print other
products other than the newspapers, and I mean that if we printed the phone book it
would be advantageous to us so any think that is on print and keeps our workers
employed. Throughout the meeting the common theme was that we made
accommodations, we made deals on the run, we partnered up with some of the
publishers who were willing to bring in commercial work into the shops and I think our
relationships with some of these publishers at least in some of these papers have
changed. They are in trouble as well and if they dont go out and get the work and if we
dont make it happen from inside the plant then we are both nished. What it has done
is that it has forced us to make a new relationship but at the same time when I say this
there are many contentious situations throughout the country and Canada. It seems like
things have stabilized a little bit by that I mean the horror stories arent quite as bad as
they were in the past but there are still several challenges. Many of the locals in
Canada have contracts now that will run to the end of 2015, I wanted to mention that in
Montreal if you remember from last year we had reported that there was a very
important binding arbitration that was taking place Montreal won that arbitration and it
was a favorable decision which included even a wage package, however the company
displeased with the situation has appealed and as I learned from our brothers in
Canada there is an appeal process the Queens Court, thats going to play out, but rarely
are these things overturned so Montreal is very, very successful in that respect. We
also learned from our brothers in Winnipeg that they have that place wall to wall and
you know a lot of these locals up there ended up organizing everybody in the whole
building which is unique, at least in North America. L406 or a couple of other locals, I
thought that was very interesting. I believe everybody here sees the handwriting on the
wall, whether you have a manning contract thats good for a couple of years or youre
stable for this year, I think everybody realizes the wrecking ball is coming if you have big
manning and its the next target and I think everybody understands it, the group was
that our members are starting to wise up and starting to pay attention to us a little bit
and if not we have to straighten them out because this is not 1975 and its not 1985 and
its not 1995, were in the twenty-rst century and there is a future for newspapers,
theres a future for our industry, obviously by the attendance here theres a grewat future
for our Conference but we have to work together and we have to continue to share the
information amongst ourselves. I do want to mention that here in Phoenix thers a dire
situation here and you very well may see a major strike. We reported that they are
making $22 per hour here in Arizona and thats a livable wage and a good union wage
here in Arizona in a Right to Work State they have ninety-ve percent of the building
unionized in a Right to Work State but they are looking to cut them ten percent and they
are looking to take away 5 paid days, looking to take away holidays and I mean theyre
really looking to make this impossible for this group. So here we are in their home state
and their home cities we should recognize that we maybe here next year talking about
raising money or maybe even before that as a Conference I think and Im praying it
does not happen and I hope and I know that they are being assisted and I hope it
doesnt happen but if it does then the Conference will show its medal once again and
for the people who havent been here many years ago youll understand what we do.
We will go back to our locals and we will do are best to support them, well take our
collections and well listen to the guys that dont want to give in and well make them do
it because all of a sudden youre not working on your favorite press you might be over
here with a bunch of guys you really dont like and there are a lot of different ways to
handle this[laughter] what does that sound familiar to anyone here? but I really wanted
to bring that up, the situations in San Diego is similar the way they treat their people but
right here in Phoenix we should be aware because we are going to be back here next
year and we maybe here assisting them so lets keep our eyes and ears open and Gods
speed to the Phoenix local. I want to give them a round of applause for hanging in
there[applause]. I think its all been said here and Im sure all the individual locals can
come up and give their reports but one thing I would like to say and Louis Nicosia went
to Catholic school and Louis this is pretty well written and I can read it but wed all miss
our ights if I read everybody's report but I want to thank you all because the
Newspaper Committee outstanding and I think anyone who attended would agree we
had a tremendous meeting and its indicative of our Conference and I want to thank you
and that will conclude our repost and move for its acceptance and also on behalf of
Local 2N I would like to say thank you to my Secretary/Treasurer Ritchie Daley who
handled most of the details for this[applause]. That concludes my report Mr. Chairman.
Joe Inemer: Motion to accept the Newspaper Committee report[so move from the oor]
thank you. I may add is Christine here today? Okay, theres also and I know shes aware
of this when you need money and you are part of the newspaper per capita you can
apply for 50/50 assistance and thats a big help, we helped the one local had $10,000 of
debt and we gave them $5,000 to help them back, so keep that in mind, thats just one
small segment of help but John is right if we need to we will go back to what we used to
do and thats pass the hat [inaudible crowd noise] Yes, Ronnie has used it a couple of
times and Christine should use it they have the money there, its sitting there, all you
need is the receipts and the proper paperwork and you make everything kosher and you
got it. Is the Thanks Committee prepared to give their report Mike Laspina? By the way
anybody nd a pair of glasses, John Laspina lost his glasses here yesterday so if
anybody nds them please turn them in.
Mike Laspina L406: Committee members were Rick Montesano San Diego 432M,
Laura Wanless Chicago 458M, Bruce Weber Toronto 100M, Allan Leatherbarrow Buffalo
261M and myself. I would like to start by thanking the Executive Board for another job
well done, Joe Inemer, Kevin Toomey, Marty Callaghan and Judy Diamond thank you
guys for doing a great job in running another successful Conference. Jamie McElravey
Sergeant at Arms thank you guys a round of applause for them[applause]. We would
also like to thank President Tedeschi, Secretary Bob Lacey for coming and John
Agenbroad, thank you guys. Thanks to all the vendors, thanks to Ritchie Daley for
running the hospitality room that was second to none I heard[applause]thanks to John
Heffernan and Local 2N for hosting the Conference and all the Locals that put up the
front money to get this started again[applause]. Thanks to Fred Brunning and Zack
Dowdy who come and to take pictures and report on the Conference in the Graphic
Communicator newspaper every month. Finally thanks to all the delegates, guests and
retirees give yourselves a round of applause for another great Conference well done
fellows[applause]. Thanks to the Chaparral Suites and have a safe trip home, that
concludes my report from the Thanks Committee respectfully submitted by Mike
Laspina L406C Chairperson.
Joe Inemer: Motion to accept
John Heffernan NY2N: The sheet of money that Howard Brown brought to the
Conference that was rafed off last night raised $730 for the Newspaper
Conference[applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you. They said they were going to bring back a sheet of fties
maybe not as many in a sheet. All right, that concludes all the committee reports and I
would like to thank all those that participated. At this time I would like the Western
Region if he could give his report, Ronnie, youll have to speak loud.
Ronnie Pineda Los Angeles 140N: [Inaudible] Is that better? Okay, so out in LA its
pretty much the same so Im not going to bore you with that, the bad side we like most
the circulation is back down, our Sundays have dropped to about 600,000, our dailies
down to 300,000 I never thought wed be below ve. Whats keeping us going like John
and brothers in New York, we are also now printing outside newspapers and those are
probably amounting to about one forth of our printing so we are also doing the NY
Times, Wall Street, we also print the local newspaper for our area for the Korean Times
and we are doing test runs right now for the USA Today so well probably have that in
our shop too. Good thing is that some of it is coming from nonunion shops and the sad
part is that some of it is coming from union shops that they are shutting down and
transferring the work elsewhere. as far as growth Im accepting the challenge at our
home local making organizing a key point. We are in touch with a local commercial
printer who reached out to us and Ive given them a draft copy of a contract and I will be
meeting with them next week and hopefully we can close that one up, again its a small
shop but if we can get them onboard and get them the bug were hoping to channel a lot
more union work to their shop. Some good news for us out there is that we set up our
ofce at Teamster L630 prior to that we were pretty much a gypsy local holding our
meetings in hotel meeting rooms and pizza places and so forth but L630 was also under
trusteeship and they have come out of it, and they have had elections and their new
Secretary/Treasurer Ernie Lopez has been a very gracious host all their members,
ofcers and executive have been very helpful in our causes when we had a de-
authorization election out in LA again they couldnt get rid of us by decertication so
they took away our money, they didnt succeed in that either we had help from L630 I
went and asked Sec/Treasurer Lopez if we could get a big truck out there as they have
to trucks Trouble and Double Trouble so we had Trouble come out and he closed his
whole ofce down so his staff could walk the sidewalk with our members asking the our
other members to vote no against the de-authorization and we won. We owe a lot of
that credit to Rick Putnam and Marty Keegan they came out and put together great
plans and we used the same formula as for organizing like I said before and on the
Organizing Committee if you need help with any level of elections when organizing de-
auths or de-certs get in touch with them, dont try and do it on your own we have
already proven that we can take these challenges on and come out the other end and
still win. Take advantage of those guys, and one other thing for example if any of you in
your home locals have any Teamster locals, again Im tapping them for everything I can,
if I need help, bodies whatever Im asking them for help. That resource also, they are
more than willing to help with anything, like L630 in LA and by all means like Pres.
Inemer said if your backs against the wall dont be afraid to ask the Conference for help
either and again we appreciate everything this Conference has done for us in LA. Ive
been on the Executive Board and I am proud to be part of this Conference and
appreciate the help weve got and weve made some tough decisions this year to keep
the Conference going and next year and Im proud of all of you passing those motions
to see to it that we do. So that\s the end of my report, thank you brothers and sisters
see you next year[applause].
Joe Inemer: Great report, a motion to accept? [moved from the oor by Mike Heine
and second by Frank Golden].Ayes have it. Is mic working? Yes there it is okay, do we
have any other Rep thats ready to do report. Mike Heines coming up.
Mike Heine DC3 L619M: Well start in Huntington, West Virginia the head of dispatch
their contract expires this December the local plans to request bargaining in October.
Beckley, West Virginia a three year deal was just signed with the Register Herald. In
Knoxville, Tennessee the News Sentinel is working with an open extension that can be
terminated by either side with a two week notice, the hold up is the ERF they want out
of it but they dont want to pay for it. Going further south brother Rick Street tells me
that in Daytona Beach we have a 34 year old brother whos very sick, hes out on
medical disability, hes drawing social security but he has a two year wait before he can
get medicare, they are trying to nd away to bridge this, working with the company
however else they can, we are not real sure the brother will make the two years. Brother
Street suggests that we all look for something on this order to protect our members in
the future. Going down to L197 Birmingham, Alabama New House property they went
to a three day week printing but because they picked up the production of the Huntsville
paper, the Huntsville Times and some smaller commercial jobs nobody lost their jobs,
they even hired some of the people from Huntsville after they closed it down. Mobile
Alabama is a sister paper to the Birmingham, they took a wage cut a couple of years
ago and things are moving on good enough now that with three years left on the
contract they are planning on asking for to get some of it back they are also working
with the company to restart the apprenticeship program Mobile. [Inaudible] L197 has
just had the Memphis Commercial Appeal transferred to their jurisdiction they are going
to start working on a contract negotiations once they have everybody settled in with it.
Now Ill move on to my latest adopted hometown Louisville, Kentucky home of the 2013
Superbowl Champs Louisville Cardinals, home of the 2013 NCAA Womens runner up
U of L Cardinals and home of the 2013 NCAA Mens basketball champions U of L
Cardinals and we have a Gannet newspaper too! In May of 2012 we picked up the
production of the USA Today for our area and we were able to bring two of our brothers
who had been laid off back to work, then in August we accepted and signed a two year
contract with no pay raise, one personal day, we also accepted part-time help and part-
time help is to be paid at eighty percent of scale. Our agreement protects the 18 of us
left on the board at the signing of the contract by allowing part-time help only after the
90 shifts are lled each week, they will not be able if they lay anybody off they cant
have part-time help. We also protected our overtime because any overtime collected by
a member for a personal day, a delayed holiday or a single vacation day thats our
overtime it does not go to part-time. The rst part-time jobs were offered to two of our
laid off members one of whom has since been brought back full-time as a part-time
worker in six months he never worked fewer than ve shifts and he worked a whole
bunch of nine and ten shift weeks to get him through. New work has started to come in
to Louisville so we have been able to add three full-time positions over the last year.
The contract was rejected twice unanimously with an add unanimous vote to seek strike
sanctions with language changes we nally were able to pass it and while we would all
rather be working folks can only go so long I dont know how much longer our guys will
take it. I would also like to thank the IBT for their recent jousting match with Gannett, the
IBT owns 180,000 shares of Gannett stock and they attended the recent shareholders
meeting to push a proposal to limit the golden parachute of the top Execs. in the event
that the company is sold or folds under. It came pretty close only 57% of the votes were
against the proposal and I just hope that this is the rst long awaited shot across the
bough. That will be my report brothers and sisters, thank you very much[applause]
Joe Inemer: You heard the report a motion to accept [motion from the oor and second]
Ayes have it, thank you. At this point the locals, Western okay come on up, you can give
your local report with that to.
Frank Golden DC4 L458 Chicago: Good morning brothers and sisters. As we reported
last year the Chicago Sun Times main press facility is now closed that put 400 people
on the street and almost half of them were Teamsters. A lot of the work or all of the work
moved over to the Chicago Tribune and very few of the members followed the work I
think we ended up with 15 maybe 20. Speaking of the Tribune we are in contract
negotiations with them now weve completed the em weve taken in the numbers when
we received them out of the trusteeship of L706 the Titan dues sheet was 93 members
we did a cross reference with the companies master seniority list and now there are 150
dues paying members into L458, there were a signicant increase of people that were
hired since 1996 that werent paying dues. Weve had two contract ratications the rst
one was turned down 3 to 1 we did better on the second one it was turned down only 2
to1 so we are moving forward the attorney for the company who are upset with us for
not selling contracts we informed them we do not sell contracts we present the crap that
they give us. We are also starting an in house organizing program with L727 that
represents the drivers, we will be doing coordinated bargaining and organizing with
them also that starting very shortly. Down state in PA L568 Quincy Herald negotiations
will be starting this week, they are not doing any commercial work so were not sure
where they are going to go with their numbers, PA Journal Star are doing commercial
work they are doing the work from Springeld that was shutdown two years ago and
Bloomington that was shutdown by our friends Zinser who many of you know that paper
shutdown last year also. Champagne Gazette its quiet there I dont believe they are
going to get any commercial work because they are running a old Cosmo 50 roll and
nobody is sending 50 roll work to commercial printing houses anymore. On another
note I would like to talk a little bit about the chief steward that was terminated, he has
become a poster child for what is wrong with the NRLB. Marcus Hedger was terminated
over 2 years ago for his union activity and the NRLB found in his favor two different
times he was ordered back to work and the company is still refusing they went to the
NRLB and because of the recess appointments that they nullied his case is in limbo,
hes testied in front of Congress last week about whats wrong with the NRLB, theres a
video thats on You Tube its called The All American: The Marcus Hedger Story, the
AFL-CRO picked it up nationally, the IBT has picked it up nationally, its on all the
websites, you can Google it and go on You Tube and I highly recommend you watch it
and pass it around to everybody that you know however you can get it out to them. I
would like to thank the GCC and especially Secretary Bob Lacey for helping Marcus get
some retro sacrice benets because of how long Marcus has been out of work he has
lost his home and he and his wife have had to down size signicantly, so any help you
can give by getting that video out so we can get our story out, whats wrong with the
NRLB and get some appointments in there it would be greatly appreciated, thank you
very much[applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you, Frank, motion to approve [motion from oor to approve]
second [second from oor]motion[Bob Lacey GCC from the oor] sorry, Bob.
Bob Lacey GCC: I would like to make a comment regarding Franks report on Marcus
Hedger dont forget if you have a member that loses their job as a result of union activity
to contact my ofce as they would be eligible to collect sacrice benets. The situation
with Marcus unfortunately he lost his home but the good news is we were able to pay
Marcus back sacrice benets for 2 years which was 36,000 dollars which[applause]
additionally Frank handed me the paperwork and the sacrice benets have started
back up[applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you, Bob. At this time Marty Callaghan would like to make his local
report, Marty.
Marty Callaghan: First of all I would like to thank L2N for hosting and to the Ofcers for
doing a ne job, its been a great Conference, its been a pleasure to meet so many new
delegates and the old friends and I really encourage the and I think Ive spoken to most
of them, the new delegates to do what you can to come again, be sure that your locals,
your District Councils and you make them aware of everything that youve learned here
and that you really want the opportunity to come back because I think this is a wealth of
knowledge for everybody here. I would also like to thank as I did at the Eastern
Conference Id be remiss if didnt thank you for the number of phone calls and emails
and cards we got during the Boston situation, we were very lucky that no members or
any of their families were affected directly by that obviously everybody in the area was
affected and we certainly know people who were in the area before the accident and
there but for the face of God and I found out from the internet and Facebook that Chris
Lang a brother, Chris Langs sister was there and I had a niece who was there just a
few minutes before so we all know all these stories but thank goodness nothing severe
has happened to anybody that we are aware of. I also want to note the storms in
Oklahoma which have just been devastating and you know you always worry too much
or maybe taking too much time to early to politicize these things but we look at the
warehouse that blew up in Texas, and we look at the devastation thats going on in
Oklahoma and we remember that both Senators from Oklahoma were against relief aid
for Sandy and Ted Cruz from Texas spoke against relief aid for Sandy, and the rst
words that come out of their mouths are we have to get the Federal Government here to
help us, so lets remember we and I dont want to get too political on sensitive issues
but lets get back to what George said these people arent here to help us, lets vote for
the people who are here to help us which brings me to an interesting story I have I
spoke to Bob Lacey about the change in the bug and I think thats one of the brightest
things that we can do for your newspaper locals that have commercial locals and I have
taken up kind of a personal crusade with the help of my VP Steve Sullivan and his
brother Pat Sullivan our Recording Secretary who is slightly politically active in so ...he
called me one day and said I was just in Dorchester and there are these signs up for
Congressman Steve Lynch who is running for an open senate seat and hes running
against Congressman OMarky they are both Democrats we didnt take a position in the
race and it was one of these printed in house brochures that they are handing around
and so I said let me look into it and then I got home, and that day to my house I had a
four color mailing from Congressman Lynch inviting me to a Labor event at the
Fireghters Hall that said printed in house with donated labor, my position on this is real
simple nonunion printing is nonunion printing no matter who does it[applause]. If you tell
me that you are a local union and you have 10 shops and you cant afford to print a yer
then okay maybe I can buy that but as a politician who comes and seeks our support
and then you are going to solicit me to Labor event and thats what it was, come meet
other Labor leaders with Congressman Lynch printed in house with donated labor I
dont think so, I did send Congressman a rather scathing letter, I wish I had brought it,
but we have dissolved a new policy in our local and because we are tired of donating to
these people and having this stuff happen and so if you come seeking our endorsement
and you feel you are worthy of getting our endorsement you will get a follow up letter or
even inserted with the letter that says this local has endorsed you, enclosed is a list of
our local print shops and we fully expect to see material from you printed in one of these
shops going forward otherwise we will revoke our endorsement and you certainly dont
want that embarrassment. So I just wanted to point that out to you, Im just tired of it and
tired of it, printed in house with donated labor, union printing is union printing we have
enough ghts out there with the printers bugs, the TIU bugs and the MNA bugs and
UAW bugs and Im tired of it. I know the Allied in Boston is not that strong we need to
maybe rebuild that but we need to make in my opinion the GCC/IBT bug the premier
bug in this country and the one that is going to be recognized the most[applause]. I
bring you fraternal greetings from longtime GCC/IBT VP Joseph OConnor, Joe was a
delegate at this Conference for many years and attended as an International Ofcer he
didnt have the ability to come but he did wish for me now that as he calls me now
youre my @#@%ing President so I guess I have to tell that he is sending his fraternal
greetings to you. I would also like to announce that in the last year we had a passing of
our long term Secretary-Treasurer who was a delegate to this Conference for many
years Ricco Peotelle some of the old guys may remember Ricco. Back to our particular
situation in Boston since our last meeting we have had 2 additional plant closings the
Worcester Telegram and Gazette also owned by the New York Times Company printed
their, shut their newspaper facility we were able to get ve jobs out of that, the work did
go to the Boston Globe but they did keep their commercial plant open, we got good
buyouts for the people who wanted to leave and nobody was forced to leave, we got
some extra maintenance work to have some people stick around for a while. The other
plant closing that we are currently dealing with is up in Manchester, New Hampshire it
looks like we are going to get some of the work, some of the work coming out of that
plant will be going union but there is a nonunion shop up in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire and thats one of the places I talked about last year, its one of the places we
have been watching there are basically four or ve print centers up there and four of
them are union and one is not and the bulk of this work is going to the nonunion shops
and as far as we are concerned we have a new target that we have deal with up there
and we talked a little bit about it at the newspaper committee and we hope that these
are our last two closings, work is picking up a little and the guys are making a little bit
more money and I think that we have been able to teach them and convince them that
this is what we need to do to survive so they have gotten over that hump but now I feel
the next hump is because they had a good year last year and because things seem to
be steady that now things are going to be better for a while but you know things are
never in my opinion be better for a long while if ever at all because the chase is on, and
we are all labor leaders and we can talk about it amongst us, its very difcult because
we work very hard in Manchester, for to get at least some of the work that was out of
there when youre going in the front door to negotiate a buyout package for the people
that are leaving and then you are coming in and coining the expression going the back
door to the Publisher about where this work is going to go, you know because when
you are sitting there with the members they dont want to hear that, they want to hear
how much money theyre going to get but we need to make sure that we can protect as
much of that work as we possibly can. So the race is on and your pressroom might be
very full right now and youre printing all these different products but remember unless
its a yer which can go away which is even a worse situation but if youre printing a
newspaper that newspaper is going to continue to constrict and at some point we hope
that circulation is going to pick up or level out or stop but if everything we are printing
now continues to constrict, continues to shrink then its going to open up more press
time and we always have to be out there and everywhere I go, I get the Catholic paper
and John said he prints the Catholic paper its printed somewhere else, were working
on trying to get that in every decent newspaper you pick up ask where is this printed
and bring it to your guy at the company and ask where is this printed and tell them to go
and get it and if you dont and one of the brothers at the newspaper meeting yesterday
said the company doesnt know how to sell commercial, if you have traditional
production managers that have been there since the eighties and the seventies and
dont have experience selling commercial work you had better urge the company to go
and get one because its a different kind of business when you are out there competing
for this work and its got to be done and its got to be done well and with quality. So my
view is that Im cautiously optimistic about the next few years, I think three years is a
lifetime in this industry, some of our commercial shops Box 10 a box shop, a specialty
shop want a lot longer term, newspaper locals want to do shorter terms, they have
taken a one or two year contract or something like that. The only other advice that I give
that I have found helpful is social media I know that a lot of us are on social media we
use it to promote the word as best we can but are family stuff gets mingled up in there
and some of the areas Brother Pinedas blog and I have my own blog that I dont post
enough on but getting the word out there of the union activity thats going on its a great
way to spread the union word and to put it out there and Id also let you know that if you
dont George mentioned yesterday from an article from Interim Publisher, Interim
Publisher has a free online updating service if you dont want to subscribe to their
magazine they send out sometimes daily updates of whats going on thats how I found
out about the presses in Chattanooga, E&P Newspapers and Technology and also
Romanesco you should follow all three of those people either with email alerts or on
Twitter or Facebook, they are a world of knowledge and sometimes the venders are on
there and you will hear a vender that might say we just made a deal to sell 8 million
dollars of inserting equipment to this company and then you would call the local and the
local doesnt even know about that yet because sometimes you dont want to go to the
companies themselves, go to the vendors because they love to sell what their new
contracts are and if theyre announcing things before the companies announcing things
to you. I talked to a brother yesterday who said that happened to him, well I hear this
well we all hear lots of stuff but when you get it good and the company says well yeah
thats whats going on, we were just waiting for a little while longer to tell you, so the
more information you have the more power you have. We still have issues and we still
have plant closings but I am going to tell you I am cautiously optimistic and this is the
rst time I have come to a Newspaper Conference in a long time where we are looking
at places you know like Albany, Pittsburgh, Chattanooga that are putting in equipment,
yes it s used equipment or this or that but its used equipment, people investing in the
printed product and I think that has more to do with them understanding that thats
where the revenue is, they want to be robust organizations, they cant afford to do it on
the digital, the digital is not moving fast enough so the commitment is there and how
many Conferences do we come to that we have people standing up saying send me
some help, more than one person, so I think things are improving and longterm the big
picture is of course we are going to continue to shrink but we are going to hope for
some saturation point we are going to hope for some closure and we are going to hope
for the best going forward.Thank you very much[applause].
Joe Inemer: That was a great report and I dont think we can top that. [Inaudible crowd
conversation]. Any other Locals that would like to report please do so.[Test mic and
crowd noise].
Christina Stegeman L58M Phoenix: Little bit of good news in my report but most of it
is bad news as some of you have heard John explained. Of the 7 new members we
have gotten in the last year we have brought 5 of them into our Local 2 of them where
from the USA Today plant that closed down right after last years Conference and 1 guy
who has only been here for 2 weeks we are trying to get him into the Local as he has
expressed interest that would bring us up to out of 73 people in our shop we would have
70 people in the Union[applause]. Once again as you heard John say we are in
negotiations, a little bit of history about Gannett in the last 10 years that they have had
this plant one of our rst contracts we got a small signing bonus of $500 and of the
course of the 3 year contract we got a small 2% increase since then our last contract we
gave up 6 1/2% wages, a weeks vacation now they want to take 10% wages, a weeks
personal time, 2 paid holidays and that would bring it over the course of 4 years to over
a 25% concession. Thats Gannett and thats where the corporate America is going to
go. Just in this contract proposal alone in wages and personal time off theyre asking for
over 600,000 dollars from 70 people thats just the Pressroom and not counting the
Mailingroom who they are in negotiations with, they are strong arming the Mailers also.
They also want to gut our contract of any control or jurisdiction of our Union, basically
they want to make our contract a company policy. Were supposed to meet with them
next week, Mike Huggins has been instrumental in helping us we are going in with
mediation next week the Teamsters are also meeting next week, they were given a
last,best and nal and told you either take this back to your people and ratify it or were
posting conditions. Unfortunately I feel they are going to try the same thing with us, the
good thing is that we are the only shop within 200 miles so they dont have any other
place to print the products that we print, I dont think that they are going to jeopardize
this plant, it makes too much money for Gannett for them to close the doors. We need
to get our members to stand strong and say enough is enough. The VP of Gannett
Publishing Services is adamant about this three a round folder that you heard Jamie talk
about yesterday he wants to bring that in to our shop and thats his baby, its a double
edged sword you are going to print more product in less time, it may put some guys out
of work but it also may extend the life of this plant and keep other people working. Dave
do you have anything else to add?
Dave Tomaszewski VP L58M Phoenix: I just want to liberate on some of the stuff they
are doing during our contract negotiations, one of the thing Mr. Carpenter who is the VP
of Production on the West Coast no longer considers us a newspaper we are physically
a commercial plant now even though they cant get commercial work in where they
blame us because our salary are to high. On the very rst day of our meetings of
negotiations they wanted a proposal from us and we told them we dont have one we
will take yours and we will go back and develop a proposal from that and which we did.
We came back and asked for the moon, stars and every single planet out there, well our
next meeting they basically came in and told us that we dont want to negotiate in good
faith, this is unacceptable well we kind of talked a little bit and next thing you know we
ended up adjourning. Next day Mr. Carpenter shows up, now Mr. Carpenter was
standing out in the hall and they have these locking mechanisms for the doors, he was
so pissed he could not get through that door, thats how hot he was. So nally when we
got into that meeting the rst thing out of his mouth was literally yelling and I would say
almost to the top of his lungs, he was that pissed that we are asking for all this and we
didnt have the company in mind at all, so one of the agreement that we decided to
make was that we would be glad to take ours back if they take back and do theirs well
we did that. When we showed up we already had a small plan which was we would give
them ours if they would give us theirs so they asked for our proposal rst thing we said
was where is yours and they said we need everything we can get, oh really you we had
an agreement we change ours and you change yours, all of a sudden we never said
that, so the plan was which Christina did she took our proposals and shoved it back in
her bag and said lets negotiate which denitely pissed him off even more and after a
few minutes of arguing we had a member who basically went into the past of how
Gannett works and it pissed Carpenter off so much that he stood up and physically said
Victor do you want to go toe to toe with me right now, well we ended up calling a caucus
just to air things out we recommended him to go to the NLRB to le charges against him
for the threat and when he did it NRLB said oh they can do that, they have better err...
what was the word they used [Christine....leeway in negotiations] thats right they have
more leeway in negotiations than you do so there is nothing we can do about it. So this
is what we are dealing with, we also had a situation were we almost lost the New York
Times, we were running bad for a week and the New York Times nally said we are
coming out to nd out and if its that things not running right then we are pulling it
newspaper out as of that time so a few of us who have worked on the New York Times
and were experienced on it were now up there and did it, we had most of the runs out
before they even showed up. When they did show up said ne were happy now but
now when it comes down to negotiations they say we want that 10% we dont care what
you did, when they almost lost a commercial shop. So this just gives you an idea of
what the way they are thinking they dont care what you do for them theyre going to nail
you to the wall every chance they got. The other one thing I have is we had 2 members
who just recently I was notied at our meeting just the other day a retiree by the name
of Don Kouminowski passed away we havent had any formal information on what
happened and in the past month or so we had a retiree by the name of Curtis Levers
which we found out the passing of him was due to Vietnam he contracted that agent
orange and it actually affected him just recently and within about a week he had passed.
Thats all we have, thank you.
Christina Stegeman L58M Phoenix: One last thing Id like to mention as President Joe
said we have relied on the NANC several times for nancial help and I would just like to
say again thank you for all the support from the NANC and President Joe, and that
concludes my report[applause].
Joe Inemer: Yes, I think a tough battle is going to emerge here in Phoenix and you can
see it coming. Any other people want to come up? [Ronnie Pineda from oor motion to
accept her report] Motion to accept? So move second, alright. [crowd noise]
Jack Noone Pennsylvania L241M DC9: Morning brothers and sisters just a little
history, Scranton used to have 3 Locals and a number of shops now its 1 Local and I
represent 3 shops. The newspaper is the Scranton Times who also Citizen Voice which
is in Hawksberry. We went through a few years of em.. we had a 2% raise coming when
the company came and asked to defer it for a few years, take a wage freeze. We had as
fair-lows as everyone talks about, when they came to us 2 years ago it said they were
going to consolidate the papers in the Scranton facility if we were hoping to forty hour
work week and exibility in scheduling so through negotiations we agreed to that and
they moved the Citizen Voice and the press into the Scranton facility and made some
adjustments and they are actively bringing in commercial work so we signed a 3 year
deal getting the 2% that we had deferred up front and over the 3 years 1 1/4% each
year. With the commercial work coming in we added 5 JPs and 2 apprentices so I think
things are going good at the paper. The 2 commercial shops one is Universal Printing
and they do a lot of political work and direct mail and they have blossomed from a small
shop of about 10 to 45 members now so theyre doing good and we are in the middle of
a 3 year contract there with 4% over the 3 years. The other commercial shop is Kappa
Graphics and they do childrens coloring books and crossword puzzle books, atlas and
fold maps we are in negotiations now with them and theyre looking for at least a 10%
concession. Concessionary bargaining is very tough and very stressful but we want to
keep in mind that we want to preserve as many jobs as we can as we go into the future
so thats what Im dealing with now. With these concessions theyre saying that they are
going to put new presses in a 7 or 8 million dollar investment we had asked them in
bargaining if they would sign a letter of contingency that if they didnt put the presses in
if we came to an agreement on the concessions and so far they have agreed to that so
we will see how that turns out. Thanks you.
Joe Inemer: A motion to approve [so move from oor] second? Ayes. Alan...
Allan Leatherbarrow L261M Buffalo: Buffalo News pressroom negotiations are up, the
last contract was really good but we dont know what we are up against now as the
Human Resource Director that we have negotiated with before has gone and now we
just got the Attorney and probably the same BS as before but the other department we
have there is the engraving department it basically turned into a commercial printing
division of the News, its all sheet fed and thats taking off we have a lot of new
members there and their contract is coming up in October and the problem there is that
when we negotiated that contract it was an engraving contract and the language doesnt
or isnt conducive to the commercial printing being done there right now but it is making
money so and the Buffalo News is making money so everything is ne there. We have
the Paperhandlers department thats a year past and the News is kind of holding off
because they may have this grand plan of healthcare for the entire News and until they
get all this information they havent made many dates for us. The other paper we
represent is Greater Niagara Newspapers its a CMHY newspaper Marty has one of
them and we ended up with a good contract there because we had a labor charge
because they claimed poverty, they denied it the NRLB backed us up and so we had
that going in as leverage and they offered zero, zero and zero part of the thing was the
West Coast Plan because at that time they were going to increase it to a 100% and then
last year we learned here that they were only going 25%, so I brought that back to the
table and still zero, zero, zero so my steward there asked the negotiator on the other
side he said Paul, are you saying you cant afford to give us a raise? and he said yes,
so we asked for their nancial records and they denied they said it. Right after we led
the labor charge because they wouldnt give us the records they gave us a 1/2% raise
for the 3 years and then we all gave afdavits and the NRLB stood behind us there we
ended up getting 1%, 1 1/2% and 1 1/2%, we got an 80/20 split in healthcare and we
got dues check off, so it worked out really good [applause]. Two months later they
terminated 4 pressmen and they cut the workforce in half and I almost think it was
retaliation but I cant prove it but we have been watching the guys, we are doing
something down there we are working through lunch to get out early but that was
helping the company and we said you guys have to go lunch and when we started going
to lunch all of a sudden the Mailingroom started having overtime so I dont know where
they are saving money but the good news I got yesterday in light of all that is that the
4th guy that they were going to layoff this Saturday, they have rescinded his notice so
he is still at work. The other guys that have been laid off are getting sub shifts and I
think through retirement and everything like that we will probably end up getting 2 more
of these guys back so thats were we are there. I dont know whether I mentioned that
we are in the process of merging with L503 and thats been taking a while, we had a
health and welfare plan that was owed from the previous administration it was owed
about $600,000 and it was preventing us from merging with L503 as that would have
been a liability to them, we nely cleared that up in a conference call with the
Department of Labor so thats out of the way so now we just got to do some other
details and Mikes hands are full right now with L27 is in his trusteeship, so I hope that
by the end of summer we will be in L503. Thats my report and I just want to thank
everybody here, every time I come here I feel welcome and I walk away feeling really
positive and I feel a lot of brotherhood here and I just want to thank everybody here
[applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you Alan, a motion to approve? [moved from oor]. Any other Local
want to give a report? Chris Lang.
Chris Lang Pittsburgh L24M: I have 11 shops 2 of which are newspapers youve
heard a brief report about the Post Gazette possibly putting in new equipment I
represent the Platemakers they are looking at terminating my whole department. In the
last 2 contracts we gave them $22 million in concessions in each contract we reduced
money and there are 11 unions down at the Post Gazette and everybody took cuts they
came back this year the initial proposal even though they are putting in new equipment
they are looking for an additional $22 million in concessions speaking on Richs behalf
because he doesnt want to they want to cut his pressroom down from 42 to 12 people
to 15 people eliminate my department and eliminate the Mailers so we are going to
have a big battle down there. Regardless of them putting in the new equipment the
effects on the people who work here are going to be huge and addition to that they are
looking into moving to another city which we think its not a good thing and its always
been a place that you always saw when you drove into the city the Pittsburgh Post
Gazette was always there at the point, that will no longer be there. Im sure that we are
going to have some rough roads ahead and I told Bob Lacey hes welcome to come
back to Pittsburgh it wont be snowing[laughter]. The other newspaper I got the
Tribune[inaudible] has just settled a 4 year deal with no increase in the rst year, 1 1/2%
in the second year, 2% in the third year and 1 1/2% in the fourth year and in addition to
that we changed our health and welfare program we went to a Teamster Bakery Drivers
program there are no out of pocket, no deductible, individual coverage with your major
medical, prescription, eye, dental, short term disability, 520 and family coverage is about
1300, a positive thing for all the people out there and that is my report from the city of
Pittsburgh[applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you, Chris. A motion to approve? second? [moved from oor]. Okay.
Any other Locals at this time? Matt.
Matt Underwood L329C York, Pennsylvania DC9: I have a small local roughly 6
shops, 2 of them are newspapers York Newspaper Company which is a media news
group and I just got word last week that one of our newspapers is going to a 3 day print
week starting January 1, there are no details on it yet. We print 5 daily papers at that
facility a couple of different jobs, I keep pushing for commercial work to be brought in
and we are running an old 1960s GOSS Metro which isnt designed to be set up for
back to back 4-color process. My other shop is Cumberland Times News in
Cumberland, Marilyn which is the CH&I Corporate and they do a lot of job work their
daily is kind of put to the back burner and they do most of their press maintenance in
house and they are also still running a 50 web, the last I heard is in Cumberland,
Marilyn they are looking at creating depots for advertising, printing and other than that
the story is basically the same as the rest of you, circulation is still going down and
advertising is down, hopefully we will still be printing a couple of newspapers here next
year, thank you[applause].
Joe Inemer: Motion to accept?[moved from oor]. Any other locals?
Matt Larsen L28N DC2: I want to thank this Conference for the warm welcome that me
and my brother member from Omaha have received from you guys. Salt Lake City we
are holding pretty stable right now our circulation is holding stable, our contract expires
the end of June and it looks like we have a deal going with the company right now, they
are picking up our health insurance again, we got a pretty substantial uprising and
theyre agreeing to pay that they want us to take a year extension same contract they
are not taking nothing from us, we are getting a lot of commercial work in and just like
John was saying take what you can get, the more the merrier we dont like to do it we
are newspaper men but times have changed we need to keep our jobs strong well
make it through this, there are a lot of wonderful people out here to keep our locals
strong, I mean it. I feel bad for Christina good luck with your ght against Gannett, but
thanks again for making us feel so welcome, I love all you guys, anything I can do for
anybody here you let me know, thank you that concludes my report [applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you. Motion to approve [moved from oor]. Are there any other
locals?
Steve Ryan L543M Omaha: I would just like to follow up on what Matt said about having
us here, everybody here has made us feel really welcome. I have been to several other
Conferences all over the United States and this one is the best one I have ever been to
[applause]. They also have the best hospitality room [laughter]. Okay, Im from Omaha
and I represent the Omaha World Herald and we have 24 Journeymen and 2
apprentices and then we also have Packaging Corporation of America and about 6
small shops so we are about a total of 120 members in Omaha. Pertaining to the World
Herald in 2008 we went into negotiations we were notied in October that Michael
Zinser was coming in and so DC2 sent David Grabhorn in to help us out and basically
like the brother I cant remember which brother was that they come in the brother from
Phoenix they come in and Zinser passes this proposal across the table that was about
2 thick and it basically gutted the whole contract and so we caucused and we told them
well we are not meeting anymore with you today and well get back to you. It was just
going back and forth battling on every single article and we werent getting anywhere
and it took us probably 2 years to sign off on recognition and I cant remember, we
signed off on recognition and one other thing and that was it in 2 years time and
basically they sent this guy in to try to bust the Union out of the World Herald is what
they did. So, then nally you guys all know whats happened out in DC and Grabhorn
went away and they sent in a business rep Mike Mattock and he had a chat out in the
hallway and told them that this is a bunch of BS and we need to do something here, this
cant keep going on like this and nally they agreed that they would bring in there local
attorney and myself and Mike would negotiate with their local attorney and Production
Manager and after that we were able to take care of all the language and stuff and the
only contention we had was the economic portion and that they wanted us to take a 9
1/2% pay cut and the other 2 bargaining units had been in and taken this pay cut and
the entire company had taken this pay cut so they were PR the rest of the company that
we were the bad guys that we werent cooperating with the company and that everyone
else had taken the pain so why cant you take the pain. The end result was that we took
a 5% pay cut and we ended up with fair low days for the other 2 years so it ended up
coming out to be 9 1/2% but the bottom line was we still retained a higher wage than we
had, so thats what happened at the World Herald. In that time period around July 2011
and in that time period behind the scenes they were negotiating with Warren Buffett to
sell the place which we did not know, so they were positioning themselves for sale and
so when Buffett bought us out in December 2011 and then after that things started to
stabilize and get better and I dont know if you guys know but hes been buying, hes
kind of a bright spot as far as owners and that, he has bought up probably close to 70
different newspapers, he owns the Buffalo News and the Washington Post and they
have created this Birkshaw Hathway Media Corporation, they have kept Buffalo and
Washington separate and all the rest of us are under that umbrella so but anyway thats
my report and I just want to thank everybody for making me feel welcome as this is my
rst time here and Ill see you guys next year, thank you [applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you a motion to approve [motioned from the oor] second [second
from the oor] approved.
Jim Longerbone L1M Twin Cities: I am here representing, I am an Executive Board
and a Chair at the Star Tribune just a couple of things at the Star Tribune our contract is
coming up at the end of this year we got nailed real hard in bankruptcy a few years ago
and so we are just surviving the only bright spot I believe is that it was just announced
last week thanks to the new Vikings Stadium that the Star Tribune are selling about 5
blocks of their land so I believe thats going to be a good thing as it will pay down their
debt and probably cut it in half so that when we get to negotiations it will be tough for
them to cry poverty they have been putting a lot of money into the place which is nice, I
mean they have put in new press drives and go digital page and I dont believe bankers
are going to let them do that if they are going to shut the place down so my
understanding is that they have been paying $10 million a year of debt down. So it
seems promising but we all stood up here and we can think the glass is half full but you
dont know until you get in there, I used to be that way but dealing with these people the
glass could be half empty you dont know, we will wait and see what happens. On the
Local level we havent been here for a few years as we were going through some
nancial problems we went down to one Ofcer and now we are looking to merge with
L29C out of St. Paul it looks promising, we kind of backed up the President for L29C
who had a quintuple by-pass a couple of months ago here so really it kind of backed
everything up but moving forward I think its a good deal, I really do, I think bring smaller
locals get everyone together, I think thats the way everybody should be doing it, you
know these smaller ones get them together and see what happens but as I say its nice
to be back, I told my Executive Board we didnt send anybody last year, well this year
we have negotiations so I think its a really good thing, I learned a lot here and I
appreciate everyones stuff and I thank New York for hosting it, its a good deal, thank
you guys [applause].
Joe Inemer: Lets hope he comes back next year with good news, motion, second
[motioned and seconded from oor]. Did you want to come up? [Conversation from
oor]. Thank you, are there any other locals that want to give a report at this time?
Jamie.
Jamie McElravey L128: I gave a partial report yesterday but I would like to follow-up
with this. Thanks Marty, Thanks again to the International and all the brothers and
sisters we already have one guy hired out of Chicago Bill Proszinski so with all your
help getting in the Communicator its working out already. Columbus has 45 Pressmen
and 5 Apprentices and 4 helpers, we just hired one so 46 and we need around 10 more.
Dayton laid off 4 they hired 1 back Mike Rocky came back actually. Indianapolis is hiring
I think they need around 5 and they are doing apprentices, if you have time to check out
the new paper go to pressline.com or fotex.com. I just want to thank you guys I
appreciate it [applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you Jamie, a motion to approve? Motion to accept?[motion from
oor] second? [second from oor] accepted. Thank you, Jamie [Crowd noise and
laughter]. Are there any other Locals at this time? Hearing none, the next order of
business, do we have any unnished business? New business [crowd noise] you can try
the mic.
Dave Tomaszewski L58M: Alright weve all sat here and listened to all these plants
being closed and people out of work the problem I see right now is for some reason our
International doesnt have very good communication because I know the Republic has
been trying to hire for more than 2 years, theyre not doing their proper advertising, they
want us to do it, now if I remember correctly about 8 or 9 years ago there used to be a
section with the International that if someone had people who werent working they were
able to post jobs available in certain cities and with the situation right now I think
personally we need to try and get the International to start that back again so that every
union here that needs these people could advertise that yes you go over there and put
your application in and hopefully just because you came from a closed plant you may be
have another job somewhere else. Now, is there anything we can do to try and push
this? Oh, I didnt see you sitting there [laughter and inaudible crowd noise].
Bob Lacey GCC: Ive got his number. Thats right David, Ill remember that next time
you call for help [laughter] No, David raises a good point and its been asked several
times but its probably been closer to 12 years or 15 years since we abandoned, we
used to send out letters to the Locals for job opportunities but what we found was that
by the time they hit your shop they were obsolete, so what we encourage is that you all
network as you are doing here and contact sister locals and let them know because by
the time you report to us and we put it in print and get it out to you the jobs already lled
so we live in the world of email but unfortunately we are still trying to experiment with
blast faxing and unfortunately a lot of our locals dont even have emails but anyway until
we nd a better way of communicating I would suggest we just pick up the phone or do
what you do at the Conferences and announce the positions that need to be lled.
[Inaudible crowd noise]
Joe Inemer: Speak into the mic
Mike Laspina L406: When you were talking about media Marty before Facebook do we
have our own group GCC/IBT Facebook page because we could and that could be
created fairly easily and we could put everything we had on that or Ronnie has a blog
but if we create something on Facebook I know Im in other groups that are in Facebook
if we create something there and I dont know how to do it so dont ask me to do it
because I have no clue but a Conference page right and right then and there I check
that every day and if I see job openings or something we can go right to the
membership and report that right away so I think thats a good idea I just dont know
how to do it so Ill leave it to Marty Callaghan to do this, do I have a seconder on that
[inaudible crowd noise].
Ronnie Pineda L140N: Marty and I have been communicating for quite a while and I
have mentioned to you guys at the Conference last year, a few of you have taken me up
on the offer. We have a blog that we started back in 2006 when we started our
campaign and this is free, you can go on google if you want to build one for your own
local I will volunteer to build one for the Conference it takes about 5 minutes we can all
go there if you want information theres ways to upload documents so if there is
anything the Conference wants to make available to all the Delegates they can go to
this page and simply download them directly from there. On our blog we have several
trade and Ive invited several of you to join via email some of you responded Marty, Curt
Friedman, Lou Nicosia and several others have accepted that. Frank Golden stays in
touch via Facebook so use the social media. If the Conference would like I would
volunteer to build a blog for the Conference [crowd noise] Thats it.
Joe Inemer: Thanks Ronnie.[Applause].
Ronnie Pineda: I will work with President Inemer and Marty and anyone else to tell me
what they want on the blog come and see me after and I will give you my card and
maybe you want to be an author on the blog again the thing I like about it is it will be the
central location if our members or your members want to know what is going on we all
go to that central place and we all want to know and we want to hear whats going on in
our neck of the woods some of us have been following this from day one so we can
build that and do the same for the Conference.
Lou Nicosia L406: To go along with what Ron is saying there should be an
administrator because we dont want to have crazy things going out there so somebody
can edit if somebody decides to send something a little bit wacky that maybe we dont
want to share.[Crowd noise].
Frank Golden DC4 L458; The guy that got hired in Columbus came out of L458 hes
one of the Pressmen from the Tribune there are still a lot guys out of work we all know
who they are from plant closings what we have done is we took our Titan list DC3 had
given us a call and sent us the information we mailed it to our out of work members right
off our Titan list and it was the fastest way to get it out to them because it was right now
so anyone who uses Titan to keep track of their newspaper guys I direct mail to them
right out of the ofce and they get it they get it to me and I get it to them its the best way
to do it right now.
Joe Inemer: Thank you. The next order of business is the election for the site for next
years NANC Conference at this time L16 Philadelphia DC9 would like to host next years
Conference right here in Scottsdale, Arizona at this facility, the dates would be May 19,
20 and 21 with registration on Sunday the 18th and Executive Board on the 17th if there
is no opposition then immediately at the end of this session I am going to be over
signing a contract L2 has done this for the last 2 years and I think they need break
because they work real hard but if theres anybody else who wants to take a shot a it
but we really want to do this so a motion [John Heffernan] second [Mike Laspina]
Question on the motion?
Mike Laspina L406: Are we going to ask the other Locals for the front money [audience
just do it now] L406 with the approval of our Executive Board we will pledge $1000 for
the Conference.[Applause].
John Heffernan NY2N: We would like to pledge $1000 to the Conference host.
[Applause].
Kevin Logan President L100M Toronto Guest: Would also like to pledge $1000 but I
would also be remiss if I didnt mention that one thing Ive missed here is that every year
I have come to this Conference Ive sat for breakfast with a few funny people and one of
them is not with us anymore and I know a few people have talked about him but Brother
Frank was a really good friend of all of ours and I really miss that especially because he
took Donnelly to task most of the time. [Applause].
Deny Fournier L41M Montreal: Will commit to $1000 to the Conference next year.
[Applause]
Joe Inemer: Were off to a good start, thank you very much we are going to work hard
to make this a success just like John and his local have done, we want to continue this,
a few years ago we tried to work with the Teamsters with their Newspaper Conference
and it was simply a take over and it was sit down keep your mouth shut and that was
about it. I think we did the right the thing L100M Tom Donnelly at the time said he would
host and we followed suit the year later and Local 2N has done the same for the last 2
years and everybody agrees that this is really a great spot, its economical and you cant
beat it for $89. [John Heffernan from the oor... we will host it the year after if everyone
agrees to stay here. Whatever it takes we will host this for the next ten years as long as
everyone shows up.[Applause] Joe, you have the guys from L406, L100M Toronto,
Montreal to support to make this happen] Youre right, as Tom would say and John
would say it takes a lot of money to put a Conference on but the Teamsters Newspaper
Conference they get funded by the International, we dont get funded by our Conference
its never been that way.[Laughter] Thats how it works we have to stick together and Im
very proud if everybody that comes here you come back with a lot more knowledge but I
just wish I could bring my entire Local because we have people that dont want to
believe its doesnt happen in my city it only happens there but its happening
everywhere. Thank you very much. The Journal thats the biggest fund raiser to help the
Local pay for expenses so if you can next year when we send out the ads if you can
take an ad from your Local please do so.
Ronnie Pineda: Point of privilege Mr. President. I just wanted to quickly thank
everybody that took the time to purchase rafe tickets for the Teamster Horseman thank
you for supporting our cause hat we are having next month in June Thank you all.
[Applause].
Joe Inemer: Thank you, Ronnie. The last order of business is the installation of the
Ofcers who have just been elected. The Reps and Jamie if you could come up and if
Secretary/Treasurer Lacey could do the honors.[Bob Lacey swears in Reps and Jamie
Sargeant at Arms ]Its real short.[Applause]. I would entertain a motion to conclude oh
hang on Brother Sherlock would like to say a few words.
Brother Jim Sherlock Newark L8N: Financial Secretary since 1974 also the
Secretary/Treasurer of the International Printcraft Union Golf Tournament I would just
like everybody to know that when they go home to their Local that this is a Union
Printcraft Tournament thats been going on since 1924 it started in Chicago in 1924 and
there was 3 years missing during World War II but every other year they had the
tournament in different States all over the country they even went to Bahamas, Spain
and Ireland theyve been around the world. This tournament is in trouble like everything
else we used to have a couple of hundred golfers and this year we just had our
tournament in Myrtle Beach and we only had 59 golfers but if you go home and mention
it to members in your Local and they want to participate in it they are never going to get
a better deal because the International Printcraft have a great reputation and we get
calls from all over the country to come and this year we have made some contacts to
have it in the Midwest and thats a place weve been trying to have it for a couple of
years now but we werent able to get any place good but in Dayton alone they have a
chapter that has 100 members in it, Detroit has a good chapter and Chicago has a good
chapter and this would be ideal for them so we would appreciate it if you would spread
the word when you go home and tell anybody that wants to get me their email Ill send
them out the newsletter. I do apologize we always done it with the label and I still do we
came out with the newsletter the last 2 years because of lack of money doesnt have the
label on it, I did talk to OConnor saying that the guy who is the Editor is a union
member from Chicago and the President is a union member from L13, Dave West from
Newark L8 and myself from Newark L8 but I never got an answer I didnt expect one but
I would like to just apologize for not having the label on the newsletter for the last couple
of years so if you could spread the word we would love to have you and keep this thing
going for the next 86 years, its 86 we just celebrated. Thank you.
Joe Inemer: With that I would like to make a motion to adjourn? [Motion by Delegates
from oor. Second by Delegates from oor] So move. Thank you very much and have a
safe trip home.
ADJOURNMENT.







Reports of Elections
Position of President: Nomination for Joe Inemer.
Nominated by Kevin Toomey
Second by Marty Callaghan
Joe Inemer President NANC by acclamation.
Position of Sergeant at Arms: Nomination for Jamie McElravey.
Nominated by Rick Montesano L432
Second by Garry Foreman L17M
Jamie McElravey Sergeant at Arms by acclamation.
Position of Eastern Rep: 3 positions:
Nomination for Lou Nicosia.
Nominated by Mike Laspina L406
Second by John Heffernan L2N
Nomination for Frank Golden.
Nominated by Laura Wanless L568
Second by Rich Daley L2N
Nomination for Mike Heine.
Nominated by Rick Montesano L432
Second by Ronnie Pineda L140N
Lou Nicosia Eastern Rep by acclamation.
Frank Golden Eastern Rep by acclamation.
Mike Heine Eastern Rep by acclamation.
Position of Western Rep: 2 positions:
Nomination for Ronnie Pineda.
Nominated by Rick Montesano L432
Second by Judy Diamond L100M
Nomination for Rick Montesano.
Nominated by Kevin Toomey L3N
Second by Marty Callaghan L3N
Rick Montesano Western Rep by acclamation.
Ronnie Pineda Western Rep by acclamation.
Canadian Rep: Nomination for Frank Mandarino
Nominated by Judy Diamond L100M
Second by John Heffernan L2N
Frank Mandarino Canadian Rep by acclamation
By-law Changes:
Elimination of Stereotyper VP
Article III Section 1: Page 5: Eliminate reference to SEP&AW Vice President
Article III Section 4: Page 6: Eliminate reference to SEP&AW Vice President
Article III Section 5(a): Page 6: Eliminate reference to SEP&AW Vice President
The Committee recommends its adoption.

Moved by Frank Golden Second by Dave Tomaszewski. Passed
Increase in Per Capita Tax
Article VI Section 2: Page 2: Amend to reect Per Capita Tax increase to one
dollar and seventy-ve cents ($1.75) per member per year.
The Committee recommends its adoption.
Moved by Gary Foreman Second by Ronnie Pineda. Passed.




List of Delegates to the 2013 North American Newspaper Conference
1M- ST. PAUL 32M (DC4) SPRINGFIELD 329C-YORK
JIM LONGERBONE LAURA WANLESS MATT UNDERWOOD
2N/1SE NEW YORK 41M-MONTREAL 406C-NASSAU COUNTY
JOHN HEFFERNAN DENIS FERNIER MICHAEL DESOLA
RICHARD DALEY LUC FAULTIER LOUIS NICOSIA
MICHAEL KOLLIGS ZACH DOWDY
58M-PHOENIX ROBERT BLENNAU
3N- BOSTON CHRISTINA STEGEMAN MICHAEL LASPINA
MARTIN CALLAGHAN DAVE TOMASZEWSKI
KEVIN TOOMEY 432M-SAN DIEGO
STEVE SULLIVAN L100M-TORONTO GEORGE HUBER
JUDY DIAMOND RICK MONTESANO
8N-NEWARK RON HACKETT
LARRY MANZIANO BRUCE WEBER 458(DC4)-CHICAGO
JIM SHERLOCK RAY WILLIAMS MARK CARPINO
FRANK MANDARINO FRANK GOLDEN
9N-PITTSBURGH
RICH BOGASKI 128N-MIDWEST 619M-LOUISVILLE
JOSEPH STERN NEWSPAPER PRESSMEN MIKE HEINE
JAMIE McELRAVEY
13N-DETROIT CEP191-WINNIPEG
JIM EARLEY 140N-LOS ANGELES JOHN WEBSTER
RONNIE PINEDA MIKE GAUTHIER
16N-PHILADELPHIA CHARLES RENEY
JOSEPH INEMER JR. CEP2000-VANCOUVER
241N-SCRANTON PETER McQUAID
17M-INDIANAPOLIS JACK NOONE
GARRY FOREMAN
261M-BUFFALO
23N-MILWAUKEE ALLAN LEATHERBARROW
SCOTT OLSON DAN MURRAY
24M-PITTSBURGH
CHRISTOPHER LANG III
List of Guests of the North American Newspaper Conference
RICHARD WHITWORTH GCC
GEORGE TEDESCHI GCC
ROBERT LACEY GCC
FRED BURNING GCC
FRANK RAK
SANDY RAK
JOHN SAVAGE, CEP
BOB OSEIPA CEP
MATT WENNER, ERF
JOHN LASPINA L406
ANTOINETTE LASPINA L406
EDDIE WILLIAMS 527S
KEVIN LOGAN 100M
GREG MORLEY 100M
JOE OBRIEN 100M
CAROLINE HEINE 619M
THOMAS HEINE 619M
MATTHEW LARSEN 28N
STEVEN RYAN 543M
MICHAEL HUGGINS GCC
NATALIE HUGGINS GCC
HOWARD BROWN 1C
MELVIN PRELAW 1C
BILL BERESH GCC
ROBERT FINLEY 1C
WAYNE HOLMAN 1C
CHARLIE ROBINSON 1C
JERRY HANKS 1C
JOANN STEPHEN 17M
JOE FERNS CEP 2000
JOHN MURPHY CEP 2000
RICK PUTMAN GCC
JODY DESOLA 406C
RAENELL MACE 458M
TOM DONNELLY 100M
56th North American Newspaper Conference
Committee Assignments
AUDITING COMMITTEE
CHAIRMAN: Jamie McElravey Midwest Pressmen L128-N
Secretary: Michael Diesel Nassau County L406-C
Rich Daley New York L2-N
Christina Stegeman Phoenix L58-M
Jim Earley Detroit L13-N
Jack Noone Scranton L241-M
BY-LAWS COMMITTEE
CHAIRMAN: Mike Heine Louisville L619-M
Secretary: Garry Foreman Indianapolis L17-M
Matt Underwood York L329-C
David Tomaszewski Phoenix L58-M
Dan Murray Buffalo L261-M
CREDENTIALS COMMITTEE
CHAIRMAN: Christopher Lang III Pittsburgh L24-M
Secretary: Ron Hackett Toronto L100-M
Scott Olson Milwaukee L23-N
Michael Kolligs New York L2-N
Rich Bogaski Pittsburgh L9-N
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
CHAIRMAN: Ronnie Pineda Los Angeles L140-N
Secretary: Larry Mansion Newark L8-N
Jim Longerbone St.Paul L1-M
Charles Reney Los Angeles L140-N
Ray Williams Toronto L100-M
Mark Carpino Chicago L458-M

NEWSPAPER COMMITTEE
CHAIRMAN: John Heffernan New York L2-N
Secretary: Louis Nicosia Nassau County L406-C
Judy Diamond Toronto L100-M
George Huber San Diego L432-M
Denis Fournier Montreal L41-M
Frank Golden Chicago L458-M
Zach Dowdy Nassau County L406-C
Stephen Sullivan Boston L3-N
Peter McQuaid Vancouver CEP
John Webster Winnipeg CEP
Luc Faucher Montreal L41-M
THANKS COMMITTEE
CHAIRMAN: Mike Laspina Nassau County L406-C
Secretary: Laura Wanless Chicago L458-M
Allan Leathebarrow Buffalo L261-M
Bruce weber Toronto L100-M
Rick Montesano San Diego L432-M