SEATTLE -- Management was settling in for a long strike as the first print edition of a newspaper produced by striking workers hit the streets Friday in competition with The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The 20-page Seattle Union Record contained familiar bylines, color photos and political cartoons -- but no ads. The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild said it planned to distribute 30,000 copies for a requested donation of 45 cents each.
The newspaper had been posted online since Tuesday, when members of the guild, which represents 1,000 editorial, circulation and advertising employees at the two papers, went on strike.
Since the walkout, the Times and the Post-Intelligencer have been publishing 24-page editions, but they published 32-page editions Friday.
"We need to step back and ask ourselves where the gaps are and what we need to do about filling them," Times President H. Mason Sizemore said.
"We've had a lot of replacement workers in place and may need to bring in more if this tends to go on -- build back to more normal operations," said Times spokeswoman Kerry Coughlin.
Guild spokesman Art Thiel, a sports columnist at the Post-Intelligencer, said he was "amazed that they could call it normal operations when all their best people are out on the streets." He said the strike was called primarily on behalf of non-news workers who tend to be paid less than newsroom staffers.
The Post-Intelligencer has imported staff from six papers owned by its parent Hearst Corp., said Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby.
Both papers said some Guild employees were working, but declined to provide
numbers.
No new talks were scheduled in the strike against the two newspapers, which have independent newsrooms but share advertising, circulation and production staffs under a joint operating agreement.
The Guild said Wednesday it had filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the Times, accusing the newspaper of threatening to fire striking employees unless they returned to work. The Times said the complaint was baseless.
The newspapers' final offer included an overall hourly wage raise of $3.30 over six years. The Guild's last demand was a three-year contract with raises totaling $3.25. The minimum for a Guild reporter with six years' experience has been $844.88 per week, or $21.12 per hour.
Post-Intelligencer Executive Editor Ken Bunting said he wants his employees to come back to work.
"I'm just hoping to soon have all those talented journalists spending their time on the picket lines back in the newsroom," he said.<
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