The $437,000 Question

That’s right, more than $400,000 is at stake in how The Sun evaluates the performance of workers under Guild jurisdiction. That is the amount of money in the performance-based pay pool that will be distributed in 2005. And that is one of the main reasons why it is so crucial that the ongoing bargaining produce a performance evaluation system that is fair to all.

Guild negotiators know that no system will work if it does not contain some essential elements:

• If employees are expected to meet certain standards, then those standards must be clearly stated. You should not be judged on failing to do something when you were never told you were supposed to be doing it.

• If employees are expected to improve, they must know specifically what, if anything, it is they are doing wrong, and how they should go about doing better. Supervisors must communicate this early and often in any evaluation process. Any evaluation of employees must be based as much as possible on facts, not on whims, personal preferences or prejudices.

• If pay raises are going to be performance-based, then they must be based on perfor-mance. To leave them solely up to "the publisher’s discretion" not only opens the pay system up to a variety of abuses, but also undercuts its purpose -- to improve performance. Management negotiators have said the raises might be based on factors other than performance, but haven't told us what those factors might be.

The bottom line is this -- only a fair performance evaluation system, one that has rational safeguards to limit, as much as possible, the irrational whims of management, will treat Guild employees properly and achieve what The Sun claims are its goals. We certainly hope management will realize that a fair system will serve both sides well and work with Guild negotiators to create such a system.

Layoff Update

On another subject, layoffs continue at the highly-profitable Sun. The good news is that layoff notices delivered just before Christmas to four part-time ad service clerks were rescinded after The Guild objected that management was not following the contract. Once it corrected that mistake, however, management sent a new round of layoff notices on Friday, to one part-time and one full-time ad service clerk and one ad makeup person. The Guild will be seeking a meeting with the company to get information on these moves, and will continue to fight to protect jobs and enforce the contract.

Of the other three who received layoff notices before Christmas, two elected to take severance rather than "bump" to other jobs. The third, who the Guild argued was laid off improperly, agreed to a monetary settlement that was more than regular severance and resigned.

- Mike Hill, Guild Bargaining Committee