Guild/CWA Contract Ratification
Questions and Answers

Q: Where and when will the Seattle Times contract ratification vote take place?
A: The ratification meetings and voting will take place at the Fairview Club, 2022 Boren Ave., which is located southeast of the Times across Denny Way. The meetings will take place over two days at the following times: 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 13, and noon and 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 14. The votes will be counted after the final meeting.

Q: Who may vote on the proposed Seattle Times contracts?
A: Full members in good standing are eligible to vote on the contract for their unit. The Guild contract covers Advertising, Circulation, News and Marketing. The Composing contract covers the Composing department. If you’re unsure of your membership status, call the Guild office at 206-328-1190.

Q: I’m a new employee. Do I get to vote?
A: New employees may vote if they sign an information card and make provisions to pay dues (most people choose payroll deduction). Sign-up materials for new members will be available at the ratification meetings. If people aren’t new, and they don’t show up on our membership roster, we will ask them to vote a challenge ballot until we can verify their membership information.

Q: Will the vote be by a show of hands?
A: No, the vote will be by secret ballot. You will have to sign next to your name on our membership roster to receive a ballot.

Q: I want to ask the bargaining team some questions before I vote. Will the team be available?
A: Yes. At every ratification meeting, the bargaining team will make a presentation on the changes to the contract, discuss its recommendation and answer questions from members. The meetings also provide an opportunity for members to express their opinions to others. We hope that members will attend and listen before voting.

Q: I will be on vacation and out of town the week of the vote. Can I still vote?
A: No, you must be present to vote. The only exception made is for employees who are out of town for work purposes, either because of their regular assignment (e.g., reporters in the Olympia and Washington D.C. bureaus) or a special assignment (e.g., on assignment to a convention or other event). For these employees, we have provisions for voting by fax. If you wish to make such arrangements, call the Guild office at 206-328-1190.

Q: Do a certain percentage of members have to vote in order for the vote to be valid?
A: No. The vote will be decided by a simple majority of those voting.

Q: Are we going to take a strike authorization vote during the ratification meetings?
A: At this time, no.

Q: Will the bargaining team put its recommendation on the blog before the vote?
A: Probably not. The blog is open to anyone on the web, and it’s not the best place for conversations that should take place among members only. The team hasn’t yet met to discuss its recommendation, but will do so prior to the vote. The team will discuss its recommendation at the ratification meetings.

Q: Can members see copies of the new contract prior to voting?
A: Yes, copies of the proof document will be available as soon as the final version is set. Summaries of changes to both contracts are available for download on the Guild web site, pnwguild.org.

A blog ourobouros

Hey, look! (Former Times reporter) Eli Sanders at The Stranger is reading our blog.
Wave hello to Eli, everyone.

To see his blog entry, click here.

So ... do you think he'll blog about our post referencing his post?

Composing: Tentative agreement

Composing-unit bargainers met with company officials Thursday evening to wrap up final proposals and come to a tentative agreement on a contract. They hope to be able to hold ratification meetings and voting on the same dates as the main unit (Sept. 13 and 14).

The contract wrapped up with tentative agreements on:

• Changes to the life and disability plan language
• The company's proposal on picket-line language

We withdrew outstanding proposals on:

• Increasing contributions to the pension fund
• 90-day notice of a sale or closure
• Successorship
• Wage increases
• Restoring Sandra Raynor (formerly Tollefson) to journey-level status

Chapel chair Rena Mefford said of the Raynor proposal: "I’d like to make a note that this was the last item to come off. There was a lot of objection to this, and this was very important to our group."

I'd like to thank Rena and the other Guild bargainers who worked so hard on the Composing-unit contract: Dan Beaumont, Gene Balk, Darryl Sclater and Guild AO Liz Brown. Thanks also to the main-unit team for participating in the opening session of Composing talks.

(Yoko)

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

What does it all mean?

Guild and Times bargainers spent Tuesday's session searching for meaning.

Specifically, we're trying to get to the bottom of what the company's "management rights" proposal is trying to say.

The company's original proposal on Article 26.1 is to add the following language to the contract:

"All management functions which the Publisher has not modified or restricted by a specific provision of this Agreement are retained and vested exclusively in the Publisher."

Both sides have since added and subtracted some language to this proposal, in an attempt to clarify and to reach common ground.

This clause was in the contract from 1986 to 2000, but was left out (because of management's error) of the contract ratified at the end of the strike.

The company's position is that because the deletion was inadvertent, it should be restored to the contract. Our position is that anything the membership didn't vote for should be treated as new language to the contract.

So with that in mind, we started asking some questions.

Times Labor Relations Director Chris Biencourt said that a management-functions clause is to reserve for management decisions such as what products the company's going to make, how many employees it's going to have, and where the business will be located.

We're OK with that, but as Guild Administrative Officer Liz Brown pointed out, those are rights that management has inherently, with or without this kind of clause.

Because we think the company already has those kinds of rights, we asked several questions to try to figure out what inclusion of this clause would mean.

The problem the company faces is this: Because the clause used to be in the contract, if it gets left out of the contract, the union can use the absence against the company in an arbitration. When something comes out of a contract, arbitrators interpret that as meaning something.

The problem the union faces is this: If we add this to a contract that doesn't currently include it, the company could assert that it has brand-new rights that it didn't have before, and that could give it extra weight in an arbitration as well.

We don't want to accept language that would in any way limit our ability to bargain over company decisions that would negatively affect members.

The Guild bargaining team is attempting to work out a compromise that would address the concerns from both sides, and hopes to be able to resolve this last outstanding issue at Wednesday's session.

Composing: A (very) little
movement forward

The big news out of Monday's negotiations between The Seattle Times and the Composing unit is that nothing's changing in the way that vacations are scheduled. Management had proposed to take initial vacation scheduling out of the hands of the chapel chair and have a manager do it.

Composing bargainers had been prepared to agree to that, if the company would agree to dues checkoff. (That's the system used in the main Guild unit, where the company automatically deducts union dues from your paycheck and forwards it to the Guild office.)

Times management was so averse to dues checkoff for the 21-member unit that it refused a package proposal we made. In exchange for dues checkoff, we would agree to:

• Withdraw our proposal to divert up to 15 cents to the CWA pension.
• Withdraw our proposal to require 90 days notice of the company's closure or sale.
• Withdraw our proposal to require that a new owner of The Seattle Times honor the existing contract.
• Accept the company's proposal on picket-line language.

With management's "no" to that package, those items remain on the table.

The company is considering our current proposal on contributions to the life and disability plan. Our proposal is basically a description of the way those contributions are currently calculated.

Management also reiterated its rejection of our proposal for sick leave for Composing-unit members. (Composing-unit members currently receive no paid sick leave.)

Another proposal they've turned down is one that would allow member Sandra Tollefson to return to journey-level status. Tollefson was originally hired in 1996, and subsequently earned journey-level status. She was laid off in January 2002, and rehired in July 2003 at the lower-paid associate wage level. If she had been rehired within a year, the contract would have required that she be returned at the higher level.

During discussion of this proposal, Guild President Yoko Kuramoto-Eidsmoe reasoned that Tollefson should be paid at the higher level since she's already demonstrated that she has the higher level of skills required of a journey-level worker.

Labor Relations Director Chris Biencourt said that journey level isn't a higher level. Biencourt said that they are the same jobs with the same skill levels.

"But one is paid more than another," Kuramoto-Eidsmoe said, confused.

"The associate rate is the market rate for the job," Biencourt said.

Guild Administrative Officer Liz Brown translated: "What he’s saying is that he thinks the Composing journey people get paid too much, and the associate level is what they want to pay. That way they can hire people at a cheaper rate. Isn’t that what you’re saying?"

"You have your words and I have mine," Biencourt replied.

The next Composing session will be after Labor Day.

It takes TWO to tango

Times management, apparently tired of what it calls the "labor dance," asked Wednesday for a temporary hold in bargaining with the Guild in an effort to, in its words, "cut to the chase."

Company Senior VP for Labor Relations and Human Resources Alayne Fardella suggested bargaining continue only after the commission-only salespeople have brought their counterproposal to the table. Then, she said, the two teams can come together to "wrap things up."

"On Friday," Fardella said, "let's put everything on the table and let's make a commitment to throw things off. Trying to balance how we cut through the more traditional labor dance and get to the end."

For the second meeting in a row, Times management came to the table with no proposals and no counterproposals, other than a sentiment that we should take a break and "cut to the chase." It left most of the Guild team wondering this: If the company is so interested in wrapping this up, then why has it essentially stalled for the past three weeks? After all, we still have outstanding proposals, but the company seems resistant to negotiation.

That was never more clear than near the end of the session. The Guild team agreed to make Thursday a caucus day, and then asked Times chief negotiator Chris Biencourt if the company had an answer on our proposal for 25 cent raises, which we gave the company almost a week ago.

"We'll give an answer on Friday," he said.

The startled look on Guild AO Liz Brown's face was priceless.

Sheri Williams, Guild bargainer, bristled at the suggestion that the Guild team wasn't already trying to make progress: "I take issue with the idea that we may have been doing some kind of a 'labor dance,' " she said. "Every day we come with a list and make a commitment to make some kind of movement. Last time, your side came to the table with nothing. If you had been prepared to move last Friday, I think we could have possibly been at the end."

It was a sentiment echoed by Guild bargainer Paul Morgan: "I'm all for making movement. But this is two meetings in a row when you've come with nothing concrete. We have all kinds of stuff that we're willing to put out on the table. I totally agree with your sentiment (to get his done). I have a great job I want to get back to. I don't know what you're hoping to accomplish with a speech that hangs it all out there and tries to usher us quickly to (conclusion)."

Guild bargainer Darryl Sclater said a quick resolution without proper debate and discussion could create more problems than it solves.

"What we agree on here is not the final word," he said. "It has to go out and be voted on by the membership as a whole. It could be counterproductive to rush a deal through and make people feel that we didn't (try everything we could)."

Guild prez Yoko Kuramoto-Eidsmoe asked why, if the company is prepared to make progress, it couldn't do so without a break.

"When Paul (Morgan, Guild bargainer) said 'It feels like we're playing games,' it struck me that this whole labor process . . . it seems like it's not what we're trying to accomplish," Fardella said. "We were trying to keep it as least contentious as possible."

So the Guild team will meet on Thursday to discuss its options, with the intention - as always - of returning to the table on Friday and making progress.

Que$tion$ and An$wer$
on COMPEN$ATION

What exactly does a “wage freeze” mean?
It’s important to know exactly what the Times’ proposal for a wage freeze means. There would be no contract or cost-of-living increases, nor any raises for the bulk of our members.
However, newer employees who are still climbing through the contract progression wage scales would continue to receive the appropriate “step increases” as they gain more tenure.
If your pay rate is completely above the top minimum on the scale, you would receive no wage increases.

How many people in the bargaining unit still have potential "step increases" within their wage classification?
About 140 people, or 23 percent of the bargaining unit, appear to have at least one "step" left on their individual wage scale. The other 77 percent of the bargaining unit (three out of every four people) are at the top of the scale and effectively "maxed out."
There is a wide variation between different departments in terms of how many people still have possible step increases. The proportion is highest in Advertising, where almost half the people (48 percent) appear to be in a position to move up at least one "step." This seems to be explained by the fact that an almost identical percentage of the Advertising work force (49 percent) has been with the company for three years or less, indicating a high rate of turnover and many new hires.
Outside of Advertising, only about 13 percent of the workforce (one person in eight) has at least one "step" left, and they tend to be newer hires in lower-paying classifications. The remaining seven out of every eight people are "maxed out."
Finally, since the wage figures these numbers are based on are several months old, a number of people probably have just taken that "final step" and joined the ranks of the "maxed out."

What about merit pay?
The Guild bargaining team has asked Times negotiators on a couple of occasions if merit increases will be available to union employees under the new contract. The answer is a decisive “don’t know.”
“Nothing prohibits it,” said Martin Hammond, labor-relations analyst, in a recent negotiations session.
We don’t know what would happen if a competitor tried to lure away a Times employee. Would the company match the competitor’s offer?
The Guild has a proposal on the table to change the contract language on merit pay. The contract currently says:

“Employees who received merit pay prior to December 5, 1983, shall continue to receive such merit pay during their term of employment. Any merit pay applied after December 5, 1983, may be removed at the Publisher’s option.”

We have proposed to get rid of the language that allows the employer to remove merit pay. So far, the Times has rejected any change. Since the company wants to hold on to the language, the Guild has asked for a list of employees who have received merit pay, and how much and when they received it.

What about “pay for performance”?
Another form of incentive pay, known as “Pay for Performance,” is described in Appendix A of the contract (page 52):

“Employees whose minimum salaries are increased due to performance increases shall continue to receive such performance increase during their term of employment, unless transferred to a job classification that does not qualify for performance pay.”

We asked about PFP in negotiations. Company negotiators told us that PFP raises haven’t been funded since the 1990s, except for some PFP increases granted to news employees in 2001 and 2002.
How do you know whether a raise you received in the past was PFP or merit pay? Good question. It’s part of the information we asked the Times for. It’s important to know the difference, since PFP under most circumstances remains part of your base wage.

What about incentive payments and commissions?
Nothing in the current contract negotiations would change the incentives and commissions earned primarily by Advertising and Circulation employees. The Guild and the Times have agreed to add language on goal-setting to the contract.
But for those who don’t regularly read the contract, this is what it says about incentives and commissions:

• Article 8.4.1—Unless otherwise committed within the terms of this Agreement, it is understood the Publisher may add, modify or eliminate all forms of incentive payment as the Publisher determines is necessary.
• Article 8.4.2—During the life of this Agreement, the Publisher will not reduce the potential incentive pay available to advertising and circulation employees under monthly and quarterly incentive plans.
• Article 8.4.3—Incentive plans will be administered fairly and equitably. Appeals or concerns under this subsection are not subject to the grievance and arbitration provision of this Agreement.

What about the wage diversion for medical? With a wage freeze, won’t we likely see our wages decline as the medical diversion inevitably increases?
The Times isn’t going so far as to say that a wage-diversion increase is inevitable, but they do say it’s probable. And if you look at the numbers since 2001 you’ll find that we have had increases four out of the past five years. (In 2004, there was actually a 2 cent an hour decrease in cost due to a one-time savings achieved by a change in plan structure.) In the four years in which we had increases, the average was roughly 10 cents an hour per year, and has produced a total increase of approximately 39 cents per hour over the course of the current contract. The current total wage diversion is 99.76 cents (about a dollar) per hour. If you’re full time, that’s $80 coming out of each paycheck.

If these trends hold, over the next two years Guild employees will be looking at an average increase in the medical diversion of roughly 10 cents per hour per year. This would raise the cost to $96 out of each paycheck for full-timers by year two.

In other words, based on these numbers and the company’s no-increase wage proposal, it is likely we could be looking at an actual wage cut of 20 cents per hour over the next two years.

Another birthday!

Guild negotiator (and Times news researcher) Gene Balk is celebrating his birthday on Friday, August 11.

Well ... "celebrating" may be too strong a word, since he'll be at the bargaining table all morning.

Please send Gene your thanks and birthday wishes at gbalk@seattletimes.com or post a comment below.

You say it's your birthday?

Happy 110th to The Seattle Times.