Washington Post - Guild News

Within the last few days the Post has distributed its Voluntary Retirement Incentive Program (“VRIP”) to eligible Guild-covered employees. This program, aimed at full-time employees ages 55 and over with at least 10 years of service, offers one to two-year salary incentive payouts and enhanced retirement benefits to all full-time news side employees and certain selected full-time commercial side employees. It is being offered during a 45-day window period to end December 21, 2003. The entire cost of the program will be covered by the Post-Guild Pension Fund.

The “VRIP” as initially proposed by the Post was subject, by terms of our union contract, to 10 days of bargaining with the Guild. The Bargaining Committee, composed of Rick Weiss, Martha Hamilton, Ed Walsh, Dan Morgan (from newsroom), Darlene Meyer, Ronnie Ingram, Lynn Sulyma, Sande Randall (from commercial), and Rick Ehrmann, WBNG Local Representative, met with Post Labor Relations representatives Trish Dunn and Allen Hounsell (joined at various times by Mike Bahr and Harry Volz) for several days of negotiations. The Guild proposal, as developed by the Bargaining Committee, aimed at increasing the benefits offered and at expanding the eligibility criteria.

The Post and the Guild failed to reach agreement on the main parts of the Guild proposal, which were:

(1) extend the Incentive Payment schedule from 30 to 40 years of service, increasing payout from 2x to 2.5x annual salary; and

(2) extend eligibility to all Guild-covered employees 55 and older with at least 10 years of service regularly working 30 hours or more per week. Despite repeated attempts by the Guild to achieve more favorable terms in these areas, the Post refused to accept any changes in these areas.

Guild proposals which the Post accepted included:

(1) providing transitional counseling by holding a seminar conducted by an outside consultant on retirement and after-retirement employment issues;

(2) giving employees the option of a retirement date that would yield an incentive payment in 2003 or 2004, to take advantage of possible tax benefits;

(3) extending the retiree health plan to cover registered domestic partners of employees retiring under this program; and

(4) achieving language changes that ensure the on-going benefits of this program.

The “VRIP” is being offered across-the-board on the news side but only for selected job categories on the business side. When the Bargaining Committee asked about this disparity, Dunn said that this was due to Post operational and economic needs. Further, she continued, the program in commercial was intended to be more “surgical” in nature – the criteria for inclusion being “no need to re-hire.” This concern, however, was not evident for the news side. Dunn commented that some rehiring may be necessary or that there may be some reduction in slots, depending on how many took the offer. This seems to signal a greater amount of flexibility in dealing with buyout impacts on the newsroom than on commercial departments.

The Guild Bargaining Committee made a strong statement urging the Post to expand its commercial side eligibility. “Eligibility is important to us; we want this to be fair to everybody,” said Rick Ehrmann. The Bargaining Committee proposed that all employees working 30 hours or more per week who have at least ten years of full-time service be included. The Post refused. The Bargaining Committee proposed that the rule of 90 be applied so that anyone whose age plus years of service equaled 90 or more could be eligible for the buyout whether they were otherwise eligible or not. The Post refused. The Bargaining Committee proposed that the rule of 95 be applied. The Post refused – with a final statement that the buyout was purely business-driven and that no formula which required employee re-hiring on the commercial side would work.

Guild-covered employees eligible for the “VRIP” on the news side number 93, on the commercial side 38.

A WORD OF CAUTION: For those eligible who have received packets, please check your years of service on the information sheet. Although you must be a full-time employee to accept this buyout, your years of service are calculated whereby even one hour of work in a year counts as a year. The Post has also offered to calculate personal comparisons for people who want to see how the buyout compares with being here another five or so years -- but you have to ask, preferably sooner than later.

For those of us who are ineligible for this program or who choose not to participate, the full impact of the “VRIP” will be realized in months and years to come. We are all aware of the effects that technological and structural changes at the Post have already had on our job situations, e.g. more work on fewer people’s shoulders and less say over how our skills are going to be used by the company. We should expect the depth and intensity of that change to increase. Advertising has recently inaugurated a new, state-of-the art ad production and processing system that will be ready in early 2005; Circulation is currently conducting a test project for the real possibility of outsourcing service center jobs to a facility in Wisconsin; and the Newsroom is undergoing cost-cutting measures that may affect jobs as well as editorial quality of the newspaper.

What can we do to better prepare ourselves and impact an uncertain future? JOIN THE GUILD.

If you are already a member, BECOME ACTIVE!

The Guild is not “They”, the Guild is “Us”. Make “US” a bigger voice. We will be heard.

In Solidarity,

-- Darlene Meyer, on behalf of the Guild Bargaining Committee

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