The Newspaper Guild has won a major victory over the Times Union over the cutting off of our dues collection last year.

The newspaper tried to prevent the union from being able to take the cessation of dues to arbitration, but a U.S. District Court justice ruled Friday that the union has a right to be heard on the case.

Last year, in an effort to force members to accept a contract that would enable the  newspaper to lay off anyone without negotiation and to lay people off and outsource their work, the Times Union canceled its contract with the union and stopped collecting dues.

The Guild argues that the newspaper does not have the right to cease dues collection. The Times Union refused to let the case go to arbitration, which resulted in the court battle the union has now won.

“We are grateful to the Guild’s International and its lawyers for their hard work on this case,” Guild President Tim O’Brien said. “The Times Union needs to stop its harmful treatment of its employees. We know times are tough and have always been willing to make concessions, but employees still deserve to be treated with kindness, dignity and respect, and part of that is to respect the workers’ right to bargain over critical matters like layoffs and outsourcing. Cutting off our dues to compel members to support an unfair contract was improper and, we’re proud to say, it didn’t work.”

An effort is being made to revitalize a local organization for women active in the labor movement.

The effort is to revive a local chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women. A meeting for anyone interested in scheduled for 5:30 p.m. June 21 at PEF headquarters on Route 7 in Latham.

Contract talks are beginning at the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle.

The threats to close the newspaper appear to be gone. It was concessions agreed to by the employees of the Chronicle in hopes of saving the newspaper that led to the Times Union making similar demands here, even while TU leaders said this newspaper remained profitable. (We’ve always acknowledged that the TU is not as profitable as it once was, nor is any newspaper, which is why we offered significant concessions in our last negotiations.)

Talks at the Times Union will resume next year, although the Guild is always willing to entertain bargaining to resolve the legal matters currently pending.

You can keep up on the negotiations at our sister paper here. We wish our good friend Michael Cabanatuan, president of the local, and his colleagues all the best.

The testimony in the case against the Times Union is complete, and the legal charges will now go to the judge for a decision.

Monday and Tuesday, a hearing into charges that the newspaper broke the law when it walked people out of the building when it was supposed to be negotiating critieria for layoffs was held at the Leo O’Brien Federal Building in downtown Albany. The National Labor Relations Board investigated the case and filed the charges.

A counsel for the NLRB was the lead prosecutor in the case.  Both the Guild and the newspaper had lawyers participating.

Guild President Tim O’Brien and seven of the workers who had been laid off testified in the case. The union is grateful to those workers for reliving what had to be one of the most painful days in their working lives.

The attorneys for all sides now have a little more than a month to file legal briefs that the judge will review before making his decision.

On Monday morning, the National Labor Relations Board will begin its hearing into charges that the Times Union violated labor law when it walked employees out of the building when the company was supposed to be negotiating layoff criteria with the Guild.

The case will be prosecuted by counsel from the NLRB, which investigated the complaint and filed the legal charge. The union will also have a lawyer participating. The company will have its own attorney, and the case will be heard by an administrative law judge.

The hearing will be held in a third floor room at the NLRB offices in the Leo O’Brien Federal Building in downtown Albany. It begins at 10 a.m. Monday and is open to the press and to the public. It is expected to take several days.

The administrative law judge will decide the case. If the Times Union is found to have violated labor law, it will be ordered to restore the affected employees to the payroll and to negotiate properly and in good faith.