Newspaper Guild rejects Journal contract offer

The vote was 160 to 109. The contract also included 85-percent company-paid medical and dental insurance, an enhanced 401(k) plan, free parking and bus passes and the loss of up to two paid holidays.

The Guild opposed several elements of the contract, including “a provision that would have required the National Labor Relations Board to dismiss unfair-labor-practice findings” against the company, a June 13 Journal story said.

The union represents employees in the news, advertising and a few smaller departments. The union employees have been working without a contract or a pay raise since early 2000, the Journal reported. The last contract offer, in February 2000, was defeated by a vote of 354 to 28, the paper said.

Guild Administrator Tim Schick told the paper that the union plans to resume contract talks with the company.

PC breaks ground on arts center, dorm building

PROVIDENCE – Providence College broke ground recently on a 60,000-square-foot arts center and a 325-room residence hall.

The $17-million Center for the Arts will consolidate the faculty and operations of the college’s Department of Music and Department of Theatre, Dance and Film. The facility will include classrooms, rehearsal rooms, performance spaces, a 275-seat theater and a recital hall/auditorium.

The center will allow for the expansion of performing arts programs at the school and will support PC’s mission by providing a new venue for its theatre, dance and music programs, PC President the Rev. Philip A. Smith said in a news release.

The new “suite style” residence hall is designed to offer students a third option to traditional dorms and on-campus apartments, and will provide on-campus housing for more than 80 percent of the student body, the school said.

The hall should reduce PC’s off-campus population from 700 to fewer than 400 students. A decade ago, 1,500 PC students lived in off-campus apartments, the school said.