In ongoing bargaining talks between Post management and the Guild, Post managers last week made a wage offer they say is very close to their final offer. That offer is even smaller than the bare-bones wage and bonus package in the contract reached three years ago!
1. None of us would see a raise until a year from now (and remember, we’ve already gone without a raise since April).
2.Then we could expect two raises a year during the two remaining years of the contract, each of those for $10.50 a week.
That’s four raises of 28 cents per hour, or a total raise of just over $1 an hour at the end of three years. Put differently, it’s about a 0.7 percent raise per year if you’re making $100,000 or a 1.45 percent raise per year if you are making $50,000. Inflation in the month of September alone jumped by 1.2 percent.
Post management says it is not fair to focus on these numbers alone. After all, they like to remind us, there is merit pay. Well, let’s look at the numbers on merit pay.
The Guild recently analyzed Washington Post merit pay data, which, under the terms of a court settlement, is provided to the Guild about every three years. These latest data cover the period from December 2001 through December 2004.
Among commercial workers in the marketing and advertising departments, fewer than one in five employees received any merit pay during that three-year period. Among employees in news that number was higher, but still only two of five employees saw any merit pay during those three years.
The news is even worse if you are a woman. In the commercial departments, men and women were equally likely to get a merit raise, but the average merit raise for women was just 80 percent of the average for men. In news, women get a double whammy:
Men were 16 percent more likely to get a merit raise than women , and women's merit awards were just three-quarters the size of men’s, on average.
African Americans are the least likely to get any merit pay. The chances African Americans are the least likely to get any merit pay. The chances of a Black man getting a merit raise are half those of a white man . (Asian and Hispanic men are a little more likely to get a merit raise than white men.) Black women are about 40 percent less likely than white, Asian or Hispanic women to get any merit pay. (Some, but not all, of these race differences can be explained by the preponderance of minorities in commercial departments, which dole out less merit pay overall.)
And as proved true with our analysis three years ago, the best way to be assured of getting a merit raise is to be making a lot of money already. Nearly three-quarters of employees making more than $100,000 a year got at least one merit raise during the three-year period, compared with about 17 percent of those earning $50,000 to $59,999.
We will spell out other details on pay and merit pay in upcoming bulletins, but you get the picture: Contractually guaranteed wages and raises are important at The Post, because that is all you can really count on.
Now let’s turn for our last few inches here to the question of whether The Post can really afford to pay us more.
The Washington Post newspaper in itself remains, by all accounts and despite all its challenges, a profitable newspaper in what Publisher Bo Jones calls the best market in the nation. Just this May, our chief executive, Don Graham, told shareholders "we feel The Post has got the best possible situation for a large metropolitan newspaper at the start of the 21st century.”
Many of us suspect that The Post is a highly profitable newspaper. Post management, however, has rebuffed repeated requests at the bargaining table to specifically disclose the paper's profits.
Instead, we are told to look at the Newspaper Division of the parent corporation – The Washington Post Co. – as representative of the Post newspaper.
So for lack of a better yardstick, let's look at this expanding division, which over the past three years has included big investments (and sometimes losses) in the Express, El Tiempo Latino and Slate.
Operating profit margin for the division in 2004: 15 percent. In 2003: 15 percent. In 2002: 13 percent.
In dollar terms, operating profit for the division in 2004 was $143 million, up 7 percent. In 2003: $134 million, up 23 percent. In 2002, $109 million, up 23 percent .
The Post newspaper is, of course, the foundation of this wealth. It's the brand name, the franchise, the source of credibility. And that credibility is built on the staff of the Post newspaper – including the Guild covered employees who provide news copy and sell ads for the website and the Express.
And for an indication of how corporate management treats shareholders, let's look at dividends:
In 2005 alone, dividends rose almost 6 percent. In 2002, when the Guild and the Post signed the soon-to-expire contract, the dividend was $5.60 per share. It is now $7.40, an increase over three years of 32 percent.
As this process has unfolded, the Guild committee has stressed the need for Post employees to keep up with inflation – exceeding 11 percent in the region during the past three years – as well as to get ahead. We've pointed out the skyrocketing prices of homes in the area. We've listed the disparities between our raises and those for federal workers and employees of other newspapers.
We've also stressed our strong desire, which management says it shares, to settle on a new agreement by Nov. 7, when the current contract expires. What we want overall, and what we deserve, is a better deal for the employees who make The Post.
Our union – your union – has had a difficult time over the past several decades, but we've held on to some fundamental rights and protections in the interest of making life better for people who work and believe in their work at The Post. It's always been a struggle. It's never been easy.
You can do your part between now and Nov. 7 by expressing your concerns to the people who can influence this process in a positive way. You know who they are. Please don't delay. Speak up today .
"No
Worker Left Behind"
