Guild Presents Comprehensive Contract Proposal

With the urgent aim of reaching agreement on a new contract by a Nov. 7 deadline, the Guild bargaining committee presented Post management with a comprehensive package proposal on Oct. 26.

The Guild package emphasizes the need for meaningful improvements in wages, the pension plan and other benefits while going a long way toward meeting management concerns on a number of issues identified by the management committee as its priorities.

The management committee, after many weeks of no movement, offered modest improvements in pay and benefits at the Oct. 26 session, representing some progress but still leaving the parties far from an overall agreement.

In bargaining on Oct. 26, the Guild moderated its pay package and dropped many other proposals in the interest of reaching a timely, fair and comprehensive settlement.

As things now stand, your Guild team is seeking an immediate raise for all Guild-covered employees of 4 percent, to help catch up with inflation, and four more raises of 2 percent every six months, starting a year into the contract.

Management is offering no raise in the first year and four raises thereafter, every six months, of $10.50 a week across the board. This translates to 28 cents an hour, up from its previous offer of 24 cents an hour. In other words, under the management proposal, wages would rise just over $1 an hour at the end of three years.

In lieu of a pay raise in the first year, management instead is offering a lump-sum bonus of $1,200 for most employees and $1,000 for part-timers who work less than 30 hours a week.

In both cases – salaries and lump sums – the management proposal is inferior to the current contract and offers employees considerably less than other recent contracts in the newspaper industry.

In terms of percentages, the raises proposed by management average out to less than 1.5 percent per year over three years for employees earning $50,000 a year, and about 0.7 percent per year for employees earning $100,000 – far less than inflation, not to mention the rising costs of health insurance.

The pension plan is another central issue in these negotiations, especially since the plan that covers Guild workers is funded at more than twice the level needed to pay all anticipated benefits.

Again, the Guild team moderated its pension proposal while still seeking substantial improvements in various ways in this complicated issue.

This involves a pool of money that cannot legally be used for other purposes, but it does figure into the corporation's overall bottom line. After some hard bargaining, management is offering a new "Social Security Supplement" payment for early retirees of $3,000 a year until age 65.

Other issues remain at large. Management wants to be able to refuse to pay expenses not filed within three months of the date they were incurred. For expenses incurred in December, expenses not reported within days could be denied. We believe this requirement is unduly onerous.

Management also wants to cap, at 10, the number days of comp time for which employees could be paid for extra days worked. We understand the company’s desire to trim comp time costs, but we have several members, particularly in Sports, who took their assignments and salaries based on the understanding that those salaries would be supplemented by comp time payments that in some cases amount to thousands of dollars per year.

The Guild maintains that we ought to be paid for the extra days that we work with a cap no smaller than 21 days per year.

The Guild is also adamantly opposed to management’s efforts to insert new language into the contract that would tie the hands of arbitrators called in to judge whether an employee has been fired with just cause – language changes that would greatly facilitate the company’s ability to dismiss employees.

In bargaining on Oct. 26, the Post tentatively agreed to provide us with salary information every year as opposed to every three years, and in electronic form, so that the Guild can keep members better informed of where they stand in comparison to their colleagues.

Also this week, the Guild team demonstrated – with compelling personal testimony from employees – the justification for targeted pay raises for our brave mail room workers who protect us from threats that range from blood to bombs, and for our bureau-based editorial aides who function largely as reporters but earn about half a reporter’s salary.

– 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"