Voting on September 13 and 14
By Liz Brown
Guild Administrative Officer
The tentative agreement reached with The Seattle Times will be put to a ratification vote on two upcoming dates, Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 13 and 14. The polling place will be at the Fairview Club, across Denny Way adjacent to the Times. Exact times will be posted later, and mobilization coordinators will distribute fliers in the workplace prior to the vote.
Copies of the tentative agreement will be available for review as soon as the proofing process is complete. The Guild also will distribute a summary document, but as always, we encourage members to read the contract. Know and understand what you’re voting on.
The ratification meetings will feature presentations from the bargaining team, which includes the following elected leaders and rank-and-file Times members: Times Unit Chairman Gene Balk (news research); Guild Local President Yoko Kuramoto-Eidsmoe (Features copy desk); Times Vice-Chair for News, Paul Morgan (copy desk); Times Vice-Chair for Advertising Bob Johnston (Sales, majors advertising); Times Vice-Chair for Circulation Barbara Heller (Assistant district adviser, Home Delivery, City zone); Times Composing Chapel Chairwoman Rena Mefford; Times Composing member Dan Beaumont; Senior Clerk and Shop Steward Patrick Fry (Inside Circ.); Shop Steward Darryl Sclater (Assistant district adviser, Home Delivery, East zone); and Advertising Account Executive and Shop Steward Sheri Williams.
The Times bargaining team worked many hours on the tentative agreement reached Aug. 23. The team felt it had hammered as hard as it could on the issues that meant the most to our members.
We want to thank Advertising Sales Associate Marilyn Ige for showing up the day the Guild presented its initial wage-increase proposal. Marilyn took time from a very busy day to make an eloquent and impassioned statement to Times management on behalf of her co-workers. She spoke from the heart about what a wage freeze would mean for sales associates.
We also want to thank the Commission Sales employees in Advertising who attended the meetings in which their special section of the contract was discussed and negotiated: Bonnie McSwain, Jaime Ladner, Kathy Nielsen, Michael Richard and Marlene Tomberg.
The team also thanks our good brother Irvin Stout, a research economist for CWA international, who came here to review the Seattle Times finances for us.
A number of members have said they missed Stout’s report when it was posted earlier on this blog. It is available below:
To read Irvin Stout's report, please click here
posted by Yoko @ Thursday, August 24, 2006
9 comments
9 Comments:
The negotiating team owes it to members to answers those questions which we need answered in order to decide how to vote. We need a forum where this discussion can take place in person, such as a membership meeting. It's been suggested several times - is it not a possibility?
Yes.
There will be plenty of time for questions and answers at the ratification meetings.
Sorry for the brevity, but I'm at work now, and I'm on deadline.
Thanks,
Yoko
Second time around to try and post:
I agree with the above threaded statements, which advocates the board members having to explain, in at least some detail, why they approved this tentative agreement. Such is not truly that much to ask, as you, the board members, did step-up to the challenge to represent us...not a shallow, simplistic responsibility which you coveted. That want of yours, does, or better stated, should come with a much better explanation to the members, than you have previously offered, of why you think this agreement is palatable for so many members, that, may I remind you, may struggle from paycheck to paycheck at a very minimum.
I apologize for this challenge in a way, but strongly feel with sincerity begging, that your positions are and should be obligated to a historical, standard understanding of your responsibilities beyond a mundane, matter-on-fact update, which is so often posted by the Union. Is it, a reality, that you do not elucidate greater detail and reasoning, because you think that you might be exposed in any strategic betrayal which you may have on the table, that we therefore do not hear about your reasoning? Give me a break, as youngsters so often cry to the discerning ears of a biased need, but you are in error. Your written opinions of what, why, and how you arrived at your decisions is/are what you need to offer to us. An open forum without definition is just a sly way to avoid substance, which can, by the way, be easily tagged/pegged. Please articulate your reasoning in written form to us. It is the proverbial benchmark, that is needed for the troops! I would, if I were in your position, take action and let the masses know of our/your thought processes, along with our/your plan to overcome the management onslaught …you can challenge me on this anytime, regarding this application!!
Next time around kindly try, and posture and pose like the company minions, as it just might work for you. They have played you par excellence. This and any honest critique should red-flag a head’s up for you to consider seriously, such a renewed take on things, without any malice intended!!!!
Let us know, how and what you believe is best for the collective. WE are not asking that much from you while representing us. Heat is always purgatory, but it goes with the territory, as one says! Do not use that, as an out of any sort!
Thanks
say what?
(in somewhat simplified english, pls)
Hold everything. Has anyone else seen this on the wire?
SEATTLE (AP) – After 110 long years of paying workers for what many consider substandard work, owners of the Seattle Times Company, Washington’s Thickest Newspaper, came up with an innovative wage proposal in contract negotiations this week: They’ll ask employees to pay the company to work there.
“It’s really the least they could do,” said Alayne Fardella, The Times’ Senior Vice President for Keeping Track of the Other 23 Senior Vice Presidents. “This is a hard time for the Seattle Times Company, which has, let’s face it, been forking out truckloads of free Tylenol, Band-Aids and notepads to these ungrateful freeloaders for decades. We think it’s time they gave something back.”
The company proposal, offered to its largest bargaining unit, the Newspaper Guild CWA Local 90210 --and already being looked at admiringly by several large corporate newspaper chains -- asks employees to pay back their usual salary to the company, on a bi-weekly basis, for two years, or until one of the company’s half-dozen other ingenious investments in two-century-old technology begins to turn a profit, whichever comes last.
“For some employees, particularly those currently living under the Viaduct, we do understand how paying us to come to work could be construed as something of a hardship,” said Chris Beincourt, the company’s chief negotiator, whose deft hand at the labor relations wheel led to a 2000-2001 strike that cost the company tens of millions of dollars and sent it into a possible death spiral. “But they need to look at the other side of the coin.”
Times managers and other non-union employees have already “taken their turn” at suffering since the newspaper began posting losses when it became legally expedient to do so five years ago, Beincourt pointed out. As many as two dozen associate managing editors, for example, have been forced to indefinitely delay plans to upgrade their personal spa systems to the more-pleasant ionic filtration, Beincourt said, grimacing.
“It’s pretty humiliating to go into a corporate retreat or a luncheon at the WAC smelling like chlorine,” he said.
Beincourt also pointed out that the Guild’s contract, laid bare by decades of company takebacks, presented little further economic spoils for the company to plunder.
“At some point, you run out of stuff to go after,” he said with a heavy sigh. “We figured it’s time to cut to the chase and just tell people the obvious: This is a great place to work, and if you don’t want to pay us to work here, we’ll find some other home-schooled idiot from Washtucna who will.”
The company expects most Guild members to understand why it’s important to “give back to the family” that owns the newspaper, he added.
Fardella agreed. Members of the Blethen family, who have owned the newspaper for more than a century, face an uncertain near-term future, she said: Depending on the outcome of a pending legal case, they’ll either wind up with sole ownership of a monopoly newspaper in one of the nation’s top media markets -- or be forced to sell and endure a windfall profit of up to a billion dollars.
“That puts a lot of stress on the family,” she said. “We expect members of our unions to do what they do best: Help release it in any way possible.”
Employees who run out of cash to give back to the company can arrange to donate blood, or, on a case-by-case basis, possibly internal organs, a highly paid spokeswoman said.
--30—
Beautiful.
Hilarious. I don't know if I'm crying tears of laughter or sadness...
Blethens to sell Maine papers?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/282340_times24.html
I don't agree with leaving our questions until Sept. 13 and 14. The voting will take place throughout the day, with members coming in when they have time between work duties. There won't be an opportunity for us to gather as one unit and work through our issues. What is the problem with calling a membership meeting?
Additionally, I've sent several posts tha haven't been posted on here - where are they going?
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