Composing: A surprisingly pleasant day


Composing-unit bargainers found the Times management team in an agreeable mood Friday.

(These talks were about the Composing contract; main Guild talks continue next Tuesday.)

The parties ended the day with several agreements on the following:

• Changing the language in section 3.4.3 as proposed by the Guild to read as follows (RED indicates deletions; BLUE indicates new language): "Making lead person assignments outside the schedule. (Examples include ad alley production lead, head make up traffic central lead, trainer, or Camex and quality assurance lead.) When doing so, the supervisor will post the job opening first consider so all interested, qualified, employees can be considered on the shift where the vacancy occurs."
• Deletion of the Memorandum of Understanding on Technical Services. (That department no longer exists.)
• Changing language in section 11.8 as proposed by management (BLUE indicates new language): "The supervisor shall determine not later than 10:30 a.m. Thursday, of any holiday observed on Monday; for any other holiday, not later than 12:00 noon on the third day prior to the holiday, the number of employees required to work on said holiday. The force shall be selected with due consideration to priority and qualification to perform the particular functions needed to be performed on the holiday. Employees may volunteer provided the employee is qualified to perform the work required. If more qualified employees volunteer than are required, priority will be considered. If fewer qualified employees volunteer than are required, employees will be assigned based on qualifications, but by reverse priority."

We also discussed vacation accrual. Employees with less than six months seniority don't get vacation time during that probationary period, but when they pass probation, the equivalent of the vacation time they would have accrued during that time gets credited to their vacation bank. Guild bargainers asked if the contract language could be changed to reflect that and Times Labor Relations Director Chris Biencourt he'd take a look and see if that's possible.

On a similar topic, we talked about the company's proposal to change how vacations are scheduled. Composing-unit bargainers defended the current system, under which chapel chairs take the schedule to members and sign them up by priority (seniority).

"This has worked extremely well. Everyone is happy as a clam," chapel chair Rena Mefford said of the decades-old system.

After further discussion, the teams realized that we agreed as far as what we want out of vacation assignment: that priority/seniority is respected and that everyone in the unit gets a shot at one first-choice vacation pick.

"My belief is that we had a similar goal in mind," Biencourt said.

Mefford agreed: "All things considered, I think we're on the same page."

All that remains to be resolved on this issue is whether the chapel chair or a Times managers will take care of this task. The parties will discuss this topic further.

A fairly intense and extended discussion on part-time scheduling ended in a surprise: Guild bargainers reviewed current contract language and concluded that the company already had the flexibility it was seeking.

Management had proposed adding the following language to the end of Article 4.1.3: "Notwithstanding the foregoing, by mutual agreement between the Publisher and the journey level employee, part-time schedules of any other configuration are permitted."

Biencourt explained that the company wanted to be able to accommodate people who would like to work fewer hours. He cited the example of someone who might prefer to ease into retirement rather than have to choose between full-time work and quitting altogether.

He said, “We’re trying to meet your needs so you stay with us.”

While the Guild team could see the value in that, we also had concerns and questions about the effects on other workers and effects on the part-time worker’s benefits. We also wondered how someone would go back to full-time status if they found that part-time work didn’t suit them.

All those questions became somewhat irrelevant when we realized that managers already can accommodate a person’s desires for part-time work under the current contract.

For example, if you wanted to work three 10-hour shifts, your supervisor could put you on a normal full-time schedule of four 10-hour shifts, Monday through Thursday. Then the two of you could mutually agree to have you take every Monday off as an unpaid day off.

So you’d be working 30 hours and getting paid 30 hours, and everyone’s happy. No changes would have to be made to the contract, and no one would have to sit down and figure out a whole new set of policies and procedures to go along with it.

We presented this solution to the management team, and they’re going to take a look at it to see whether it takes care of what they wanted.

“You’ve basically given us something to chew on. We’ll think about whether this works,” Biencourt said.