Are your paper carriers about to have a lot of free time on their hands?

If the tone of a media bulletin earlier this month from the union representing local workers at the Prince Rupert Daily News is any indication, things seem to be reaching a boil when it comes to the ongoing negotiations between the union and Glacier Ventures.

An October 2nd update provided some background on the state of negotiations which saw the the CEP the union representing local 2000 receive a strong strike mandate in pursuit of a successful resolution over their concerns with management.

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· October 2, 2008 - CEP Local 2000 members in four more B.C. locations voted strongly in favour of strike action this week. The votes were delivered by members in Nanaimo, Campbell River, Penticton and Kelowna.

This follows strong votes in the Kootenays, Peace River, Prince Rupert and Kamloops in recent weeks.Votes have now been held in eleven cities covering eighteen certifications in B.C.Union members voted very strongly in favour of strike action, if necessary, to get acceptable increases in wages and other improvements in their collective agreements.

· Bargaining is next scheduled for the “Sterling” group (Peace River, Kootenays and Prince Rupert) October 15th -17th , followed by Prince George October 21st - 22nd.

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Those negotiations for Prince Rupert took place just before the Thanksgiving weekend and one assumes if there had been any kind of progress that the paper might have given us a glimpse of the “cooperative” spirit of negotiating.

Instead, we open up today’s Daily news and discover that the entire Production department seems to have disappeared, as the photos of Trevor Kayzer and Ann Ferguson, who were featured on page four in Friday's paper, are no longer included in the roster of staff for two days running now. No longer part of the column of dedicated Daily News employees found on page four.

In fact their department seems to have disappeared into the wind, not an uncommon event at the paper which lately seems to have folks disappear without explanation more often than your average episode of the X Files.

It wasn’t all that long ago that reporter Leanne Ritchie left the paper without so much as a farewell column, a move that left more than a few residents and subscribers scratching their heads about what was going on at the local newspaper.

Now with two production workers also seemingly no longer part of the Daily News team, one wonders what arrangements are being made to have that work taken care of.

Some suggest that the work is being done off site and out of town (an interesting concept for a paper that constantly features those shop local ads) a possibility that seems to gain currency as the negotiations continue and the delivery times of the paper ebb and flow.

It’s a pretty interesting dynamic to have staff changes and job eliminations take place in the course of a negotiating session, one that may steel the resolve of the union members to carry forward their stand to whatever outcome that it leads to.

There is no listing of when if any further negotiations are planned between the two sides, but with a strong mandate for job action already provided to the union and with the internal issues that seem to be stalking the paper moving forward, one wonders how much longer the Daily News will be arriving on your doorstep in its current form and with familiar names on the bylines.

It being a newspaper and all, it might be time for an news story for the subscribers updating a labour issue in the community, if nothing else at least an update from the Publisher providing some corporate spin about some of the drama that seems to be unfolding on the other side of the presses…