Wednesday, April 23, 2008

San Francisco Peninsula Press Club: New Chron printer moves ahead with plant



The Canadian company that will take over the printing of the Chronicle next year is moving ahead with construction of its new plant in Fremont, and the union currently representing the paper's printers wants to get its foot in the door at the new plant.

"It depends how much pressure we can put, to have them hire our folks and get them to unionize," Chuck Davis, business agent for Teamsters Local 853, told Brad Kava, writing for the SF Weekly.

The Chron's plan (see previous posts) is to let its contract with the 237 Teamster printers expire next year, and then turn the printing over to Transcon, which presumably would be a non-union operation. Previous reports have said that Transcon plans to spend $200 million to build the $338,000-square-foot plant on Kato Road, near the Dixon Landing-880 interchange. Transcon is looking for workers (see Monster ad).

Kava says the new press will lead to a redesign of the Chron and could also mean better advertising, with ads that might fold out like maps and lead buyers to a store.

New Chron printer moves ahead with plant

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