Published Monday, October 9, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News

Mercury News carriers stop delivery to protest rising cost of gas, late papers, more work By the Mercury News About 200 carriers refused to deliver 60,000 copies of Sunday's San Jose Mercury News in protest over soaring gasoline prices, late papers and additional work created by the newspaper's recent redesign, Publisher Jay Harris said.

Approximately 38,000 subscribers in Campbell, Los Gatos, Saratoga and West San Jose didn't get their papers, Harris said, while another 22,000 received either late or incomplete papers.

Harris said about 200 out of 1,200 carriers took part in the job action. Harris said he planned to meet with the upset carriers early this morning to hear their complaints directly and answer their demand for a pay increase to help offset the high cost of gas.

``We will look at every issue and do what we think is fair to our carriers, right for our customers and good for our company,'' Harris said. He said he didn't know if the job action would continue today.

The carriers are independent contractors and are not employed by the newspaper.

``The contractors have been affected like everybody else by the dramatic increase in gasoline prices,'' Harris said. ``Since they are responsible for their own costs, it has impacted them.''

He described the contractors as diligent, hard-working people, many of whom go to school or have other jobs.

``It's important to them to finish their jobs on time,'' he said.

Recent changes have caused delays in both the newsroom and the pressroom, causing the papers to get to the carriers late. That has made it difficult for them to get papers to customers by 5:30 a.m., the newspaper's guaranteed delivery time, Harris said.

``It's really a hardship for them when the papers are late,'' he said.

Harris said the increased size of the newspaper also has become an issue. There are now more parts of the paper to assemble before delivery.

In addition, Harris noted, there were 40 advertising inserts in Sunday's paper, higher than normal for this time of the year.

Many of the papers Sunday were assembled by 60 Mercury News employees, from executives to clerical staff who came in to help out.

Harris and Executive Editor David Yarnold were among those who assembled and stuffed newspapers into plastic bags for delivery.

Mercury News employees in newspaper trucks parked at Safeway and Albertson's lots in the Campbell area also handed out about 5,000 papers to people who had not received home delivery.

The Sunday circulation is 325,000, of which 270,000 is home delivery.

http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/strike09a.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 09, 2000