Post Demands Faster Firing

In a push for an easier and quicker way to fire employees, Post management is demanding some form of its proposed "Three Strikes and You're Out" approach to workplace justice.

The proposed change, which would reduce the burden of proof for supervisors who want to send employees packing, is one of several take-backs that Post managers are hoping to win in ongoing contract negotiations with the Guild.

Others include a proposed change in comp-time rules that would cap the number of paid comp days to ten per year, force employees to wait as long as one year to get paid for those comp days, and a new rule that would allow managers to transfer workers involuntarily to new jobs that would pay less than their current wages.

The proposed change in procedures for firing an employee is a direct attack on one of the bedrock principles embedded in our union contract: The right to keep your job unless management can show "just cause" that you deserve to be fired. The Guild bargaining committee feels very strongly that such a change would seriously undermine employees' rights and should be kept out of the new contract currently being bargained.

Here's the background:

Our labor contract at The Post allows for discipline, including discharge, but only for "good and sufficient cause."

That's very different than the situation at nonunion companies, such as USA Today and Wal-Mart, where employees are hired "at will" and can be fired without notice or explanation at a supervisor's whim. Recently, this happened to a well respected, long-term employee at WPNI (Washington Post Web site), whose employees have no union contract and no "just cause" protection.

Company negotiators said they want the right to fire people for performance and attendance problems after just two preliminary acts of discipline – either two warnings or a warning and a suspension.

The term "good and sufficient cause" has a specific meaning as the result of decades of labor arbitration decisions. In short, it means an employee must have adequate notice that a certain course of conduct can lead to discipline. It means the company has to conduct a fair investigation, prove its case, treat employees the same, and make sure the penalty fits the crime.

At The Post and other workplaces with similar protections, this has meant the employer must give an employee a series of warnings of increasing intensity, such as verbal warnings, written warnings, and a temporary suspension before taking final action. That's known as progressive discipline.

Now, Post management has made it clear that it would prefer to simply count to three.

Management’s initial proposal would have automatically allowed the discharge of anyone accused of violating attendance or performance standards for the third time. After listening to Guild negotiators protest that this prohibited the union from raising arguments of mitigating circumstances or disparate treatment, the Post modified its proposal last week.

But the company's modified language still declares that just two warnings, or a warning and a suspension, would satisfy the requirement of progressive discipline. This would end the current practice in which an outside arbitrator could decide, on a case by case basis, whether progressive discipline had been appropriately applied by the company. Numbers would count more than words.

This is just one of several efforts by Post management to weaken the Guild's ability to defend employees.

Wages

Post bargainers have refused to talk about raises since making their paltry wage proposal the first day of bargaining, claiming that employees must first accept its list of take-backs before they will even talk about money. This is simply unacceptable.

– Your Guild Bargaining Committee: Ann Marie Ditchey, Rick Ehrmann, Robin Groom, Tiffany Harris, Veronica Ingram, Stephen King, Gerald Martineau, Darlene Meyer, Bruce Nelson, Robert Pierre, David Robie, Keith Sinzinger, Rick Weiss

"No Worker Left Behind"