CRANSTON — Union leaders Thursday urged the Raimondo administration to reject a request from the owners of The Providence Journal to exempt the daily newspaper industry from state laws requiring overtime pay for Sunday and holiday work.

Like most other Rhode Island workers, newspaper employees — from reporters to press operators — receive time-and-a-half for working on Sundays and holidays, something Journal President and Publisher Peter Meyer told state labor officials costs the company $300,000 per year.

To relieve that burden, company executives asked Gov. Gina Raimondo last year to add the seven-day-a-week newspapers to the businesses that are exempt from the overtime rules, a list that includes airport car rental workers, taxi drivers and 24-hour gas station attendants.

And this year Raimondo's Department of Labor and Training proposed a newspaper exemption along with one for round-the-clock "animal-care facilities."

But in a public hearing on the proposed rule changes, Journal employees and union leaders said the proposal was a blatant attempt by Journal parent GateHouse Media to line the pockets of executives and shareholders at the expense of workers.

"This proposal, in its simplest language, is cruel and selfish," said George Nee, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO. "To bring this request before you ... shows the kind of soulless thinking that goes on at the corporate level, and this is corporate greed at its absolute most ... It's almost like saying, give us an opportunity to do wage theft."

Matthew Taibi, Teamsters Local 251 secretary treasurer, said if the newspaper is granted an exemption from the wage laws, it will speed other industries to seek their own carve-outs.

In the union crosshairs was GateHouse CEO Kirk Davis' $1.7-million 2018 pay package.

"They said this was about shared sacrifice — that we are in this together, our members and executives," said Teamsters contractor coordinator David Robbins. "Lo and behold, the guy who is already making over $500,000 a year, whose profits are realized on the backs of our members, is getting huge bonuses and stock options and our members get pay freezes."

Asked after the hearing whether the union argument about Davis' pay was fair, Meyer called it "apples and oranges" with worker Sunday pay and added that Davis has "absolutely" earned his bonus.

During an editorial board interview, former Journal publisher Janet Hasson objected to the Journal having to pay Sunday overtime at its printing plant and looked to the governor for action. She said Friday she was using Sunday overtime as an example of a policy that keeps Rhode Island at a competitive disadvantage.

Hasson made the point, which Meyer echoed Thursday, that Rhode Island is the only state in the region that requires extra Sunday pay, giving the Journal's competitors for commercial printing clients in Massachusetts a leg up.

"We need to be competitive in the commercial print marketplace, because if we are not, we lose that work and then we have nothing," Meyer told the DLT. "We don't just lose the overtime pay on Sundays. We lose pay altogether."

The Journal has also noted the long list of other businesses with special exemptions from Sunday overtime pay. In addition to gas-station, car-rental and taxi workers, it includes round-the-clock "wall-covering" makers, airport maintenance crews, church workers, college employees, fresh-packaged food preparers, roadside-assistance services and "manufacturers of monoclonal antibodies using mammalian cells."

The public comment period for the proposed exemption runs until Oct. 27. After that the state will publish final regulations.