John Hill

The leader of The Providence Journal’s largest union is not pleased that its parent company increased top executives’ compensation last year.

John Hill, president of the Providence Newspaper Guild, offered his reaction after Dallas-based A.H. Belo disclosed in an SEC filing Monday that its five top executives received larger pay packages in 2010, including nearly $1.6 million in cash bonuses.

“Those of us in the Providence Newspaper Guild, when we agreed to assume a larger share of our health insurance costs this year, thought we were doing it to help protect the financial future of our paper, not pad the wallets of Belo’s Dallas executives,” Hill said in an e-mail.

A.H. Belo did not respond to a request for comment.

Hill’s members voted 147-50 on Feb. 16 in favor of a new three-year contract with The Journal and A.H. Belo that will freeze wages and increase medical costs but that supporters also hope will protect some jobs.

Prior to the vote, Hill said the contract made “the best of a bad situation.” This week, though, he chastised management for pushing reporters and other employees at The Journal to accept reduced benefits while increasing their own compensation.

“These kinds of actions will make it that much harder to believe them the next time they ask us to give up even more,” Hill said.

The new contract between The Journal and the Guild’s roughly 250 members took effect on April 1 and will continue through Dec. 31, 2013. The Projo is the only one of A.H. Belo’s three papers whose workers are unionized.

Hill was elected the Providence Guild’s president in 2003 following a bitter battle between management and labor at The Journal. He has run unopposed for the union’s top post since 2004.

(photo: Providence Newspaper Guild)