The Sun's Three-Pronged Attack On Your Job

The Sun states its bargaining goals are for "operating efficiency, a high performance-driven culture" and cost cutting. There are probably many ways for a business to achieve these goals while respecting the value of its employee's work. But the Sun chooses a more brutal approach, reflected in their three-pronged attack on your job. Judge for yourself:

Prong 1: Under the Sun's proposal, any employee can be transferred to any job in their department in any classification at any time for any reason for any duration. For this transfer provision, the Sun would group together Editorial and News, and would group together Advertising, Marketing and Communications, Audiotext, and Sunsource. When the Sun decides to transfer you, you will be paid at the pay rate of the job they've dropped you into--whether it's a lower paid or a higher paid job. You won't know from day to day what you do for a living, what your pay will be, or whether you are being moved around to harass you to resign. You just won't know. High performance driven culture? Or Punitive Performance culture? Please.

Prong 2: Under the Sun's proposal, managers, contractors, and non-Guild Sun employees will be permitted to perform any and all Guild work. The Sun says it that no one will be laid off directly as a result of this, but think about it. Some employees may well be assigned to different jobs under Prong 1, with a hope that they will resign. And think about this: Currently, as the Sun informed the Baltimore Business Journal on opening day of bargaining, the Guild represents 40% of Sun employees. By far the largest Sun union. That's a lot of worker power. And that's a problem for the Sun. It wants unilateral control over everything about your wages and working conditions. So, if the Sun can, over time, have managers and contractors perform more and more Guild work, as Guild employees retire, resign, or are fired, chunks of that 40% are lost. Lost as well is bargaining power for the remaining employees. And when we are weakened, the Sun will seek even more rollbacks in pay and benefits.

Prong 3: Under the Sun's proposal, new hires will be subject to layoff based on skills and qualifications, not seniority in their job. While the Sun says this proposal won't affect the current employees, we know that when job security and other safe guards get weakened in the contract, in the next round of bargaining the Sun reaches for deeper concessions. They'll be trying to take away seniority in layoffs for current employees next time. And with bargaining unit numbers diminishing as workers resign or retire and their work is taken by managers and contractors (see Prong 2!), the Sun will be ruthless in its demands for concessions. If the Sun wants to be more journalistically and financially successful, it can start by ceasing the attack on its employees.