With a vote only two days away, some Newsday drivers are growing angrier over a new proposed labor contract with owner Cablevision.
The proposal, they feel, unfairly targets their bargaining unit for cuts and will result in outsourcing jobs to non-union deliverers.
Their anger could lead to the scuttling of a new four-year labor pact, which goes to a vote on Sunday.
“To single out one bargaining unit is a disgrace,” said Michael O’Connor, a vice steward of the transportation unit and former overall president of Local 406.
Added Jim Boyd, another trucker and former 406 representative, “The Teamsters have never supported outsourcing of union jobs to non-union workers, I don’t know why they are supporting this now.”
“Three years ago, I offered outsourcing and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters put the kibosh on it,” said O’Connor.
George Tedeschi, vice president at large of the Teamsters in Washington, did not return several calls seeking comment.
Anthony Bertolino, the current vice president of the transport unit, said he is urging members in his unit to vote “no” even though it will give a $29,500 buyout bonus to drivers who opt to exit.
If the new pact is okayed, pay hikes doled out at the rate of 2 percent each of the first two years, zero percent the third year and two percent in the final year will go into effect for all union workers — but only if the truckers agree to take the job-reduction hit first.
If drivers reject it, the deal is dead.
Other bargaining units will only get to vote Sunday if the drivers approve their pact, according to a memo that editorial deputy unit chair Lisa May sent to Newsday journalists on Thursday.
As so with most major metropolitan newspapers in the country, circulation at Newsday has dropped sharply in the past decade.
Cablevision CEO Jim Dolan paid $650 million for the Long Island daily in 2008, but so far it has been a drag on the cable giant’s earnings.
Last year, the nation’s 12th-largest daily paper lost about $40 million and lost another $12.2 million in the first six months of 2013.
In a bid to return to profit, the company hopes to shave $10 million in labor costs by offering buyouts to 35 truckers as part of a proposed new four-year labor pact.
All of the bargaining units — from the reporters in editorial to the print plant operators known as pressmen to drivers in the transportation unit — are represented by one union, Local 406 of the Graphic Communications Council, which is affiliated with the Teamsters.
A Newsday spokesman said the company is working on a number of issues with its unions, but would not comment on individual issues.