With time running out on the deadline for someone to buy the Chicago Sun-Times, a second bidder has emerged, according to a union boss.
Thomas J. Thibeault, executive director of the Chicago Newspaper Guild, said he was approached by an unnamed bidder shortly after a Sept. 15 vote during which the union rejected concessions demanded by Chicago financier Jim Tyree as conditions for his $26.5 million buyout of the paper.
Thisbeault wouldn’t reveal the identity of the interested party other than to say he was someone in the financial world. Officials at Sun-Times Media Group and its bankers said Tyree’s bid is on the only one on the table and that no new bidder has approached them. Final bids are due Sunday.
Tyree had earlier set today as the deadline for unions to agree to his demands, saying that he would drop his offer if his conditions weren’t met. However, a Delaware Bankruptcy Court judge later scrapped that deadline, ruling that the demand amounted to poor-faith bargaining.
The Guild says Tyree’s demands would “gut” its current contract, a position that’s shared by several other unions. Five of the company’s 16 unions have rejected the terms, four have accepted and seven still haven’t voted. Meanwhile, the company continues to burn several hundred thousand dollars a week.
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Poor-faith bargaining?
Has any judge ever found that? (Makes me think of all those “faith based” initiatives that Bush was talking about as substitutes to ever having to taking any action on anything[, except him and Cheney pocketing some more of our money.])
Let the Chicago Sun-Times die.
It will be a victories for the trees.
I also can’t see how the union can win in Chicago without major concessions. The Sun-Times, unfortunately, is likely in its final days.