• Temporary transfer pay. Someone working half a shift or more --- or half a week or more in a higher classification (inside sales working as outside sales, editorial assistant working as reporter, reporter working as rewrite person) is entitled to be paid for the day or week at the higher rate (contract section 5.5 a). Someone filling in for a boss is entitled to $10 a day extra. (5.5 b).
• Night differential. An extra $4 for any shift beginning noon or later; $4.50 for 4 pm or later; $5 for midnight or later (5.8).
• Standby pay. An employee on call to report to work as needed should be paid straight time while standing by. (Leaving a phone number isn't standing by.)
• Work on day off. Must be paid at least 5 1/3 hours at time and a half. (6.5 e)
• Call-back pay. An employee called in early, or called back after a shift, gets at least three hours (or the number of hours until the scheduled shift begins) at time and a half. (6.6)

• Mileage. Keep track of miles driven for work; reimbursable currently at 37 ½ cents a mile. (15.2)
• Car insurance. Reporters, photographers and ad salespeople who use their cars for work get $6 per week to defray the cost of car insurance. (15.2)
• Other expenses. The Sun must pay all legitimate business expenses. (15.1)

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It's Your Overtime, You Earned It!

• Unworked paid time for jury duty, bereavement leave, and holidays are included as time for overtime purposes. For example, if you work 27 hours and take 16 hours of bereavement leave during the workweek, you are entitled to 3 hours of overtime. (contract section 5.9)
• Employees are supposed to have at least 11 hours off between shifts. If an employee is scheduled to return to work with less than11 hours off from his/her previous shift, they are entitled to overtime pay (1 ½ times hourly rate) until the 11th hour. For example an employee scheduled to work from 3:00pm to 11:00pm on Monday, then 7:00am to 3:00pm Tuesday. Since the 7:00am start time is less than 11 hours from the end of the previous shift, the employee is entitled to 3 hours overtime --- the difference between the 11 hours he's supposed to have and the 8 hours he actually has between shifts. (6.4)
• Travel time for assignments out of the office is time worked and should be considered when computing overtime. (6.5b)
• If you are required to reduce your lunch period or work through your lunch period that time should be calculated at 1 ½ times hourly rate. (6.5(d))
• If you work on a holiday, you get double time.
• Also see again: Work on day off and Call-back pay in Nickel and Diming Back.

Sun Management Effectuates More Layoffs During Holidays

The Sun management has just effectuated layoffs again. It seems like Sun management always likes to do layoffs right around the holidays.

The layoff is dealing with one Advertising Service Clerk in the PrePress and Business Development Department and will be effective on January 15, 2005.

Last year during the holidays the Sun laid off several employees only to find, after the Guild challenged it, that the lay off had been done incorrectly. The Sun had to recall many of employees originally laid off. Well, this year management is back at it and the Guild will make sure management follows the contract correctly again.
We'll keep everyone updated.

Grievances/Issues in the Pipeline

Right now the Guild is engaged in several legal battles with the company. Although this litigation impacts us locally, it's the Tribune in Chicago calling the shots. The Tribune lawyers from Chicago are guiding the Sun Labor Relations legal maneuvers to compromise the Guild and their own employees.

Here are some updates:

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT PLANS

The Guild filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) against the Sun because the Sun did not properly bargain the Performance Improvement Plan during evaluation bargaining earlier this year. Some employees have received Performance Improvement Plans from management, in an attempt to correct or enhance employee's production through trepidation.

Because of Sun's Labor Relations Department missteps, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a charge against the Sun for failing to bargain in good faith and for not proving information regarding the Performance Improvement Plans.

The leverage of the NLRB charge forced the Sun to settle this issue with the Guild. Sun management must realize that they have to deal with the Guild and cannot implement anything they like. Below is the joint statement settlement:

JOINT STATEMENT BY THE BALTIMORE SUN AND THE WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE NEWSPAPER GUILD

On March 31, 2004, the Guild filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board Claiming that the Sun failed to bargain in good faith over the use of Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) in connection with the negotiations of a performance evaluation system. The Sun denies the charge.

Both parties now agree to resolve the litigation before the Board with the following Letter of Understanding:

The Publisher shall have the right, from time to time, to design and/or implement written Performance Improvement Plan ("PIP") forms in departments covered by this Agreement.

The Publisher will notify the Union of any such proposed written forms and give the Guild the opportunity to bargain over the design of such PIP forms following the execution of this letter or upon future notice of the design of such form.

Upon the Guild's request on or before January 14, 2005, the parties agree to bargain in good faith for four (4) weeks. If, following such a request from the Guild, the Publisher is unable to schedule any bargaining during a particular week within the relevant four-week period, the bargaining period will be extended by an equal number of weeks.

In the event the parties are unable to reach agreement over the design of PIP forms within the time defined by this Letter of Understanding, the Publisher may continue to use any existing forms or implement new written forms consistent with its last offer to the Guild.

On or before December 31, 2004, the Guild may request, on a one-time basis, that The Sun rescind any PIP form issued to unit employees between the date of January 1, 2004 and the date on which the parties conclude the PIP form negotiations within the time period described above. Upon such timely request to rescind PIP forms, the Sun agrees to transfer the content of the applicable PIP form into a written memorandum (the "PIP Memorandum") to be placed in the employee's personnel file, and then rescind the related PIP form. The PIP Memorandum will be fully enforceable provided its content is consistent with the content of the related PIP form that it has replaced.

RETIREE MEDICAL HEALTH PLAN

The company met with the Guild on October 28 for the step three grievance regarding its elimination of access to the health plan for employees retiring after August 31, 2004. The Guild demonstrated that the company repeatedly stated in bargaining that its proposal to end access to the plan for employees hired after June 25, 2003 would have no effect on employees hired before June 25, 2003.

Still, the company denied the grievance and the Guild will take necessary actions to compel arbitration so the benefit is preserved as the contract intends.

ETHICS CODE BARGAINING

Also on October 5, 2004 the Guild filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) against the Sun over the recent ethics bargaining. In the ULP we claimed that the ethics code interferes with and restrains, and is inherently destructive of bargaining unit employees' Section 7 rights (right to engage in protected union activity), and subjects employees to discipline for engaging in activities protected by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.

There are also other issues with the code, such as:

• There are provisions of the code that cannot be implemented without agreement from the Guild.
• The Sun's implementation of the outside activities language conflicts with the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.
• The Sun violated the National Labor Relations Act by unilaterally implementing a code that reserves to the Sun discretion on work, union and concerted activities, outside employment and other matters.
• The Sun may not lawfully restrict employee political and civil rights, particularly where the Code is not narrowly tailored to govern activities that would directly compromise journalistic integrity.

JANITORAL EVALUATIONS

We filed another Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) last week with the National Labor Relations Board against the Sun. Sun management has failed to bargain in good faith over a new Janitorial Evaluation System.

Even though we bargained with the Sun earlier this year over evaluations, management insisted on implementing another separate evaluation system for the Janitorial Department at Sun Park. This is in addition to the one for all employees, now janitorial employees have two evaluations.

We hope to have the NLRB issue a charge on this matter and rescind the extra janitorial evaluation until properly bargained.