Sept. 20, 2004

Tribune Ethics Code: Delving Deep Into Your Life

As the final week of negotiations on an ethics policy covering all Guild employees begins, very troubling issues remain on the table. The company still insists on undue control over your life with policies that have the possibility of seriously eroding your privacy. On Friday, the company is expected to impose their final offer. Right now, the company's policy includes the following:

  • All employees must tell their supervisor about anything they get paid for outside the company. Committee member Bill Salganik asked if this included his work as a soccer referee in recreational leagues, something that would seem to have no connection or possible conflict with his work as a business reporter. The answer? "Yes."
  • Each year, you will be required to fill out a compliance form listing all of your memberships and speaking engagements and freelance work and anything else that might come under the purview of the ethics code, even things you have already disclosed to your supervisors during the year and gotten clearance for. You must sign that statement, saying either that you have not violated the code or confessing any of your violations. And, if you have violated, you can be subject to discipline on the basis of your confession. Requiring self-incrimination is apparently an ethical practice to the company.
  • The code continues to prohibit most political and other advocacy activity by people who work in the newsroom but who have nothing to do with its newsgathering operations --editorial assistants, copy persons, photo technicians and the like.
  • And under the provisions of this code, it is still possible to behave according to the highest ethical standards, but be in violation because you did not get permission for that behavior. In other words, you can write a freelance piece for a publication that in no way competes with the Sun or has any conflict with your beat, but be in trouble because you did not get permission in advance.

When we raise objections to these policies at the negotiating table, we are assured that the code will be applied with "common sense."

But when Bill Salganik asked if the necessity to get permission for freelance work would apply to contributing messages to email listservs, the answer was, "Yes." So if you cover baseball and you're on a message group about HIV/AIDs, or any personal, sensitive interest in your personal life, before you contribute anything, you have to clear that with your editor. If that is an example of common sense, well, you can see why we are skeptical.

On Monday, we plan to make a series of counter proposals that we think will take care of some of this policy's more egregious flaws. But the stubbornness that company negotiators have displayed on some of the crucial points has been troubling.

So deliver this message to your supervisors and to anyone else you know in management: The obedience that their negotiators are seeking is not the same at ethics. The Guild wants an ethical workplace. The way to achieve that is by informing employees of ethical standards and empowering them to meet them, by respecting your workers and expecting the best of them. It is not by demeaning them with petty regulations and forcing them to comply, or else.

Remember -- We are the Sun. And we are ethical!

-- Michael Hill, Guild Unit Chair
You'll find a link to the Guild's proposal at www.wbng.org.

Return to Guild Local Home Page


[About Local 32035] [Local Leaders] [Local Staff] [Unit Leaders] [Local Bylaws & Governance] [Contracts] [Newsroom]
[Need a Union?] [Labor Calendar] [Related Sites] [Home Page]

Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, Local 32035 TNG-CWA, AFL-CIO/ 1100 15th St., NW, Suite 350, Washington, D.C. 20005
202-785-3650 /Fax: 202-785-3659

© 2004 Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. No portion of this website may be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission, except by members of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. Copyright of photographs is held by the photographers; reprint permission may be granted only by the photographers. WBNG is solely responsible for the content of this website.

Questions or comments about this site? Contact Local32035@wbng.org