Endorsement deal
It’s a rare thing when politics take a back seat in a political endorsement process.
But that’s happening in Rochester this season.
This
September will make 13 years since the writers at the Democrat and Chronicle have had a contract. Members of the Rochester Newspaper Guild — the union
for newsroom employees — have pushed in a recent ad campaign and series of
protests to make their struggle more public. Now they’ve hit upon a fresh way
of doing that: They’ve persuaded every candidate for mayor in the upcoming
Democratic primary not to cross their picket line to attend endorsement
interviews.
The
guild says they had planned to ask candidates for a wholesale boycott of the
endorsement process, but adjusted after a sudden companywide management shuffle
sent past publisher David Hunke to Detroit and brought publisher Michael Kane
to Rochester.
The
move was meant to convince Kane to reverse the paper’s policy and accept a
federal mediator at contract negotiations, according to a guild newsletter
circulated in the D&C newsroom
last week.
“This
will all simply be resolved with a sign from Mr. Kane or other management
leaders within the building that a federal mediator will be welcomed at the
next bargaining sessions,” the newsletter stated. “Again, this is not a major
request. Nothing a mediator recommends is binding. His or her role is simply to
try to move the process towards a fair resolution.”
At
least one candidate tried to use the situation to broker a discussion between
both sides. In a Monday email to Kane that stressed the paper’s civic role in
the community, Wade Norwood offered to spend the time slated for his
endorsement interview to meet with Kane and union reps.
Norwood’s
campaign manager Chris Christopher says she’s putting it politely when she
states his effort was “rebuffed.”
“The
publisher felt that it wasn’t within Wade’s purview to bring the two sides
together,” Christopher says.
Norwood
said the reply, delivered to him verbally by Kane’s secretary, conveyed “a
strong sense that the offer that I had made was inappropriate,” a response he
found “disappointing.”
Through
his secretary, Kane declined to be interviewed for this story, directing
inquiries to a company spokesperson.
By
Monday afternoon, when the last of the interviews was scheduled to take place,
none of the four candidates had kept their appointments, according to editorial
page editor Jim Lawrence.
Now
what happens?
“At
this point, we haven’t decided what we’ll do,” Lawrence says. But a decision
will have to be made by the end of the week, he added.
Tom
Flynn, veep of communications, seemed less worried about the missing
interviews.
“That’s
just one small piece of the endorsement process,” speaking from his vacation.
As for the labor dispute itself, Flynn freely admitted he had little to say
beyond the official line, which is that the dispute is a private personnel
issue.
“We
do not comment out of respect for our employees,” he says. “We continue to
negotiate with the union in good faith.”
But
the union’s demands are very specific: It wants the paper to allow a federal
mediator into the negotiations. After a 13-year stalemate, why is that such a
bad idea? Flynn’s initial response was that the question of allowing a federal
mediator was too “complicated” to explain. Pressed, he responded “I leave that
to the company’s labor lawyer.”
That
lawyer, Wendell Van Lare, hadn’t returned phone calls by press time Tuesday.
You can’t have him
Bob
Hawkes says a recruiter for the Marines called his house a few weeks ago looking for his son.
When
the phone rang, Hawkes’ wife answered, and the officer on the other end asked
if he could speak with her kid.
“No!”
she said. “And you can’t have him.”
“Well,
thanks a lot for your patriotism ma’am,” he snapped and hung up.
The
city Board of Education just revised its recruitment policy so scenes like that
can be avoided. Starting this September, a new form will be attached to the
Emergency Contact sheets sent home with students. It will notify parents of
their right to grant or prohibit disclosure of their child’s student directory
information to potential employers, colleges, and the military. All parents have to do is indicate their choice
and return the form.
“The language is very explicit. If we do not
receive input from the parent, we will choose to protect the student’s
privacy,” says commissioner Willa Powell. “Some people may see this as a de
facto opt-in policy. And it’s not. When we enter responses in our computer, we
will identify those students as a ‘no response’ in the system.”
John Starr
Clarissa Room
owner John Starr, known for his fedora and ever-present smile, died
unexpectedly on Saturday, August 27. He was 50 years old.
Starr
was responsible for rekindling the jazz and blues flame in the historic
Clarissa Street neighborhood by reopening the club previously known as Shep’s
Paradise. Much of Rochester’s musical elite has graced the bandstand since the
club opened exactly one year ago last week. The Clarissa Room jumped on
weekends like an old roadhouse with Starr running the whole affair as if he was
hosting it in his own living room.
Starr’s
children, Mike and Jennifer, will carry on with the club, set to open again on
September 9.
“Do
you know how pissed he’d be if we didn’t?” Mike says. “He’s probably pissed we
closed Saturday.”
A
memorial service and open jam will be held at the Clarissa Room, 293 Clarissa
Street, this Friday, September 2, at 4 p.m. 325-5350.
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 6, 2005.
