Dow Jones and union close to agreement

Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times writes Friday that the union representing business journalists at The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and Marketwatch is close to an agreement with parent company Dow Jones & Co., on a new contract.

Perez-Pena wrote, “The board of the union, the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, is scheduled to meet tomorrow and may be ready then to endorse a deal and schedule a vote by the membership, the officials said.

“The union represents about 2,000 Dow Jones employees, who have been without a contract since January. They include most of the reporters and copy editors at The Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, as well as workers at various Dow Jones properties in a number of other fields, like technology and finance.

“‘We had another bargaining meeting yesterday, and things got close,’ said E. S. Browning, a Journal reporter who heads the union’s bargaining committee. ‘We’re not quite there yet. We’re waiting for a couple of pieces still to fall into place.'”

Read more here.