Washington Post - Guild NewsNov. 14, 2002 Guild Membership Ratifies 3-Year ContractGuild members at The Washington Post voted Nov. 7 to ratify a new three-year contract, capping more than seven months of very difficult negotiations between Post management and the Guild. The vote was 181 to 11. Members also overwhelmingly approved a spontaneous motion from the floor requiring the bargaining committee to extend the following message to Post management: “Guild members wish to convey to management their disappointment with the paltry financial compensation in the contract and state for the record their unwillingness to accept such low sums in the future.” The new contract – described in previous bulletins, available from the Guild office, and soon to be posted on the Guild Web site (www.wbng.org) – includes a lump sum payment of $1,350 for full-timers and $1,000 for part-timers, which is expected to be disbursed in early December. Post management will soon distribute paperwork to all eligible employees, asking them to decide how much of that lump sum each wants to receive as taxable income and how much, if any, should be deposited into the employee’s 401(k) account. Funds deposited into the 401(k) plan will not be taxed and will be augmented 5 percent by the company. An upcoming bulletin will spell out upcoming changes in the vacation system, which will not take effect until about three months from now.
Echoing the formal statement sent to management, many members who
voted for ratification also expressed their disgust with the inadequate
wages offered by Post management and the message of low esteem for
workers conveyed by the company’s final offer. Post publisher
Bo Jones and chairman Don Graham consistently failed to acknowledge
that, despite lower-than-average advertising income during the recent
recession, the newspaper is still highly profitable. The Guild won
additional concessions in the final days of In addition to winning some contractual improvements and keeping several management take-backs at bay, we showed Post management that it had calculated wrong when it figured that employees wouldn’t care about proposed changes that stood to weaken the union. On the contrary, about 285 people joined the union in the months leading up to and including these negotiations. Not only did membership grow, but activism increased as well. Weekly rallies, demonstrations at Post-sponsored community events, internal actions in news and commercial areas, and a subscription-boycott pledge campaign were hallmarks of our solidarity. And during the spectacular byline strikes this summer and fall, it was Guild members and non-members alike who withheld their names from their stories in protest, even as we gained the support of many of our mid-level managers who recognized the company was in the wrong. It’s been decades since Guild-covered employees have pulled together and stood up to management the way we did this year. If there is a lesson to be learned from this process, it’s that we can achieve improvements when we have the solidarity and strength of a unified workforce – and also that it is going to take even more solidarity and strength to win the most difficult battle: the battle to win better wages. Let’s all commit ourselves to getting to that level of strength during the next three years, and doing even better next time. --
Your Guild Bargaining Committee
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Washington-Baltimore
Newspaper Guild, Local 32035 TNG-CWA, AFL-CIO/ 1100 15th St., NW,
Suite 350 Washington, DC 20005/ 202-785-3650 /Fax: 202-785-3659 Copyright © 2002 Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild |
