60 Days? Or 120 Days?

If you’ve been following the P-I sale story closely, you’ll remember that P-I employees are currently working under an expired union contract. Today brought a meeting between their union, the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, and Hearst. It was a meeting that had originally been scheduled to negotiate a new contract—but now, obviously, involved a very different kind of discussion.

I’m still waiting to hear what transpired, but here’s a question that union administrator Liz Brown told me she would be asking: Why hasn’t Hearst yet filed an official “notice of closure” with the union, the mayor, and the local unemployment agency as required by federal law? Such a notice needs to be filed 60 days before an employer like the P-I shuts down, Brown said. But all Hearst has done is say publicly that the P-I is up for sale for the next 60 days and will cease printing if there’s no buyer after that 60-day period ends.

The reason for the lack of a Hearst “notice of closure” could be pretty straightforward: Hearst, according to its publicly-stated plans, won’t know whether it’s closing the P-I until after the 60 days it originally announced (or, as of today, 57 days) pass without a buyer. But this raises a potential problem that may end up helping P-I employees. “If they let these 60 days run out and don’t sell the P-I, then they owe us another 60 days’ notice as far as I’m concerned,” Brown said.

You can’t just stop paying employees and shut down if you haven’t filed a “notice of closure,” she said. So, as far as those P-I paychecks are concerned, it’s possible—if Brown is correct—that they’ll keep coming for another 120 days. (60 days of trying to sell + 60 days’ notice of closure.)