Last week, the owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Hearst Corporation, asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed against it by the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, the union that represents many of its newspapers writers.

In September 2007, the Guild filed a lawsuit against Hearst over "alleged violations of the collective bargaining agreement binding them since August 2006," according to an article in the Seattle P.I.

The September lawsuit was in response to the P.I.'s lack of legal action regarding a grievance filed by the Guild on July 2, 2007 about an online reporter position at the newspaper.

"We did not start this fight, but we intend to defend ourselves aggressively," P.I. editor and publisher Roger Oglesby said in the Oct. 31 P.I. article "Hearst seeks dismissal of suit from P.I. employe's union."

The Guild upholds that the P.I. is violating the New Media Agreement, signed in February 1998. This agreement gave a job description for online reporters and exempted them from Guild membership.

However, in March 2006 the Guild ended that agreement, although the P.I. did not, because they wanted the position to be filled by a Guild member. There is only one employee with the title of online reporter in the New Media Department.

"There are two levels to this issue — the substance: who is a reporter, if they are only doing online content?" said Associate Dean and law professor Lea Vaughn. "[With a] procedural issue, for certain issues it matters as much where they are resolved as much as what the problem is."

Other questions, such as "Who are going to be reporters, as we shift to an online world? Should online reporters be held to the same standards?" are also brought up by this case, Vaughn said.

Hearst is also adding counterclaims and seeking damages from the Guild over alleged breach of contract surrounding the online reporter position. Hearst argued that since the New Media Agreement is still in effect, the Guild does not have grounds to file the grievance.

Another issue is that while the Guild wants to arbitrate, the P.I. does not see the need to do so and has offered to negotiate the grievance without going to court.

Hearst's counterclaims include a charge that the grievance filed in July by the Guild was changed in October.

According to Hearst, the first grievance is no longer valid because it has been changed.

The second grievance says the Guild will seek an order "prohibiting the Seattle P.I. from assigning reportorial work of the type currently being performed by the online reporter, which we contend is work which our members are exclusively entitled to perform, to any Seattle P.I. employee not included within the Guild's bargaining unit," according to the P.I. article.

"Technology is affecting the way that we define a number of jobs," Vaughn said. "Most of us thought about technology and globalization as affecting lower level jobs, or outsourcing, but this story brings home the way that technology is leading us to redefine professions."

Another interesting question that Vaughn touched on at the periphery of this issue is the way in which an online position changes the type of interactions a job entails.

"For some occupations the question is if you need to be there locally to understand the issues. For some jobs being local is, or should be, part of the job description," Vaughn said.

[Reach reporter Sonia McBride at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]