The Teamsters Local 853 union has been picketing outside the huge Fremont printing plant from which the San Francisco Chronicle will soon be produced. At issue is the 300-odd driver and mailroom jobs that went away with the move; the new plant is not only non-union, but is run by a foreign operator, Montreal-based Transcontinental, Inc., which signed a 15-year deal to handle the Chronicle’s printing duties.

SF Weekly reports that union drivers are delivering solidarity -- but not ink to the plant. No ink, no presses, no papers . . . no problem. Transcontinental has minimized the issue through use of non-union drivers.

Rome Aloise, principal officer of the union in question, told the Weekly that the Teamsters are not going to take it lightly once the transition to the new presses takes place.

"If they are intent on opening that plant nonunion, [we will start] an advertisers' boycott -- and that will stop the swirl of the Chronicle down the bowl and it will go all the way down," he said in January. "It would be a death-wish to open that plant non-union."