As many of you are painfully aware, the 10% pay cut went into effect today with the payroll for Sept. 18. The Guild has told management that we are examining the before-and-after hourly wage to make sure the calculation was done correctly, but please examine the numbers for yourself (using the Star Lawson website) and notify us if you see a problem (or ask us and we can help if you need it.)

We have notified Human Resources that it appears that the company did not correct the health-care deduction (for those who use Star insurance) but any overcharge will be reimbursed on future paychecks. Health care fees are based on your salary and there are four tiers — so if you fell a “tier” then the amount that you are charged gets reduced. We can help you on that too, if you need it.

• View the Gannett health insurance tiers (PDF)

Lastly, we apologize that the contracts have not been printed. Despite verbal promises from HR during the contract signing Sept. 2-3 that 500 copies of the contract would be printed and distributed within a week (the Star has traditionally printed them and bills the Guild for half) that task never got done, but a complaint to HR today got the ball rolling. We will let you know when they are ready, and also make a digital PDF available at all times on indynewsguild.com.

Star Publisher Michael Kane and I signed the two-year contract this morning together in the fourth-floor board room, making the deal official. The company and Guild will split the cost of making 500 copies, which will be distributed early next week. The Guild is also putting together a “primer” or guide, so to speak, to address the changes to work conditions. Later, we’ll have a new printed Inkling that outlines our strategies for now through 2011. Also, we’ll be distributing new red triangle-shaped “desk tents” that read “Work the contract” on one side, and “10%: I Gave At The Office” on the other.

Michael met with me for nearly an hour as part of the signing. I reiterated to him that the staff is demoralized and divided over the 10% pay cut. I emphasized the Guild’s financial sacrifice. I asked that our unit be spared any additional impact should Gannett seek to get leaner or try and lower payrolls chain-wide now through 2011. And, I requested some type of staff-wide acknowledgment over our contributions — saving the Star $2 million, namely — that he agreed to consider. I didn’t receive all the answers I was hoping for, but he was courteous enough to listen to my questions. Send any thoughts or questions you have to me at indystar68@yahoo.com.

Lastly, IndyStar.com online producer Adam Yates, a steward who joined the bargaining committee earlier this year and was appointed secretary on the panel, will serve in that role on an interim basis until our next advertised meeting. He will be appointed to finish a term running through July 1, 2010. Congrats, Adam!

For Indy News Guild 34070 and the bargaining committee,

Tom Spalding
president

Click image to view full-size

Although we have ratified a contract, which will be signed Monday, we are trying to mount an effort to publicize our recent union vote. Toward that end, a handful of Guild members will distribute three handouts on Friday morning to an audience of 600 journalists in town for SPJ at the Westin. An image of the three are attached. We are trying to show Gannett that it might have been able to force this bad contract on us, with its 10% pay cut, but all our members are angry about it  – including the journalists who are appearing as speakers at the convention this weekend on behalf of the Indianapolis Star.

We are jazzed up about journalism too and want to let everyone know in a positive way the sacrifice made by Guild members. The flyers convey our spirit and resolve — one of the flyers, in fact, lists our numerous winners of coveted journalism prizes — including SPJ’s! — and there’s no better group to tell our story. We hope to provide flyers to Virgil Smith, vice president/talent management, Gannett Company, Inc., who is at the SPJ convention to speak at a career counseling panel.

We have chosen to take a big-picture, long-term view of things and recognize that the preparation for the next round of bargaining starts now, not in 2011. Over the next two years, we want to continually remind management here at the Star and at Gannett that we expect a better contract next time.

We want management to know that we are expecting to recover the lost pay and lost pay increases in our next contract when the economy improves. We want to remind management we are not happy about only union-represented employees being asked to take huge pay cuts. We need to remind them every day that our members are going to work the contract.

— The officers and stewards of Indy News Guild 34070

P.S.: Some good news: With respect to our inquiry regarding health benefits (in Wednesday’s e-Inkling), we have been told by HR that when an employee has a change in salary that puts them in a different salary band, the change will update automatically with YBR. Once internal paperwork has been submitted reflecting the pay change, a letter is generated by YBR to the employee notifying them of the reduced premium.

P.S.S: Some other (possible) good news. Although we did drop the arbitration over the “December 7,” the company has told us that, if and when the Star begins hiring Guild-covered positions again, they will first reach out to those that were let go in 2008. You know why? Because it’s in the contract.

The following letter was sent out earlier this afternoon to the publisher, Michael Kane, which we wanted to share with you.

Michael Kane
publisher, Indianapolis Star

Aug. 26, 2009

Dear Mr. Kane,

The membership of Indianapolis News Guild 34070 voted 56-45 Tuesday to ratify a two-year contract with Gannett, running Aug. 30 through Aug. 29, 2011. The contract includes a 10% pay cut and no wage increases during the term.

We want to emphasize that the action by the membership of the Guild is a financial sacrifice meant to help the Star’s bottom line during this economic downturn. It is one of the highest permanent wage cuts of any newspaper in the country. It is a sacrifice that our unit (newsroom/building services) alone is bearing, as management and other non-union personnel have not been asked for the same sweeping, universal cut; our vote will save the company an estimated $2 million in payroll over the next two years.

Long-term, we expect the company to be aware of this sacrifice when the economy improves. Short-term, we expect the company to spare this unit should Gannett need to continue to cut costs.

As members’ pay is cut 10%, the Guild will accordingly reduce dues by a similar amount. The Guild requests that the company allow unit members enrolled in the company health care plan to have their premiums lowered immediately if their new hourly wage drops them down a level; premiums, as you know, are based on four “tiers” and some Guild members may drop from tier “C” to “B” or from “B” to “A,” for example. It is not only fair, but the right thing to do, in our opinion.

The new contract gives you flexibility to assign our team of journalists to work on products that we are not accustomed to working, including the possibility of advertorial. Out of a concern for ethics, we request that you never exercise that damaging option for ANY Guild-covered employees.

Finally, now that bargaining is over, the Guild hopes the company will allow Editor Dennis Ryerson to address the aftermath of this new contract with its employees, who are bewildered, upset and depressed over the economic hardship they now face. That hardship was forced on them to fulfill a company mandate that was never satisfactorily explained. They have many questions about why the Indy Star needed to improve its profitability at the expense of only a fifth of its staff.

They feel guilty that the company tied an unrelated arbitration to contract talks and that they were forced to “take sides” and sacrifice 7 former co-workers to save their own jobs.

Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Tom Spalding, president
Indianapolis News Guild 34070
with the contract bargaining team and officers

cc: James Keough, Dennis Ryerson, Jay Schmitz, Bernie Lunzer

The membership of Indianapolis News Guild 34070 voted 56-45 to ratify a contract with Gannett. Members voted for a 2-year contract that takes effect Aug. 30 through Aug. 29, 2011. The contract includes a 10% pay cut and no wage increases during the term of the contract. The vote today also provides a settlement to 7 Star employees laid off in December 2008. Eighty-six percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

The action by the membership of the Guild is a financial sacrifice meant to help the Star’s bottom line during this economic downturn. It is a sacrifice that we alone are bearing, as management and other non-union personnel have not been asked to make this sacrifice.

We expect the company to be aware of this sacrifice when the economy improves.

We will soon provide the new contract to members, and we urge members to work that contract to the letter. No more free overtime.

Thanks everyone for your support over the past nine months.

Indy News Guild bargaining team

The Indianapolis News Guild vote will be held from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. today. We will count absentee and in-person votes and expect to have an answer by 8 p.m. tonight.The agreement, if ratified, would apply to about 170 hourly workers covered by the Indianapolis News Guild Local 34070, which includes reporters, photographers, librarians, copy editors, clerks; and to 17 maintenance workers also covered by the contract.

THE DEAL: The Guild negotiations committee, after nearly 10 months of off-and-on contract talks, reached a tentative agreement on a two-year contract that we agreed on Aug. 7 to take to duespayers for a vote on Aug. 25. It is important to emphasize that we feel that it is the “best deal” that could be reached at this time. It isn’t a great package, but it’s the one that does the least amount of damage.

PLEASE DO YOUR PART AND VOTE! AND SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT GETTING TO THE POLL LOCATION, 325 N. Delaware, across from the Star’ parking garage in Downtown Indy!

The Indianapolis News Guild local 34070 today reached a tentative agreement with representatives of Gannett/The Indianapolis Star that would include a 10% permanent pay cut effective Aug. 30, 2009 that would apply to all roughly 185 employees covered by our unit.

That two-year agreement is subject to a ratification vote by duespayers that is scheduled for noon-to-6 p.m. on Aug. 25 (with absentee balloting allowed for anyone who cannot participate in person). Additional details will come early next week, once the company provides our union with its final proposal. We also urge you to attend one of two information sessions [scheduled for 2-to-4 p.m. on Aug. 16 and Aug. 23] so you can understand the ramifications of a “yes” vote versus a “no” vote on the agreement. All info sessions and the election will be at the Musicians Hall, 325 N. Delaware St.

We thank Conrad Bowling, mediator, Indianapolis Field Office, federal mediation and conciliation service, for his assistance in bargaining over the past two days.

E-mail Tom Spalding at indystar68@yahoo.com or Shari Rudavsky at srudavsky@msn.com for an absentee ballot.

The Indy News Guild is getting ready to head back to the bargaining table with Gannett management this Thursday and Friday. We have been able to partially reconstitute our team and get everyone up to speed for the sessions. The sessions will include a federal mediator whose role, we hope, will be to guide us toward a fair contract — and take that contract proposal to membership for an eventual vote.

In the meantime, to help the team fully understand the wishes of our layoff-hammered unit, we put together a confidential, internal-use-only 10-question online survey that went to duespayers. [If you are a duespayer and this is news to you, email us back at this address so we can get your input.]

As a side note, we have contacted the National Labor Relations Board in Indianapolis and made an unfair labor practice charge against Gannett. It is our contention that the company prematurely submitted to us a “last, best and final offer” as a punitive action to our refusing to meet on certain days.

We will keep you posted. Please stay involved. And be sure to wear your lanyards, or red, on Thursday and Friday!

The Indianapolis News Guild has some important new developments to share with you regarding our ongoing effort to craft a final contract that both negotiating teams can accept and that you, our duespayers, can ratify soon.

Acting on the advice of our parent union, TNG-CWA, we proposed to the company that we involve a federal mediator at this stage of the negotiations. Having received no objections from our verbal and written communications about the mediator, we contacted Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Commissioner Conrad Bowling and requested possible meeting dates from him. He offered Aug. 6 and 7 and we have accepted those dates. The company has agreed.

Also, we have filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the company, based on threats that management made to the Guild in the course of discussions over possible bargaining dates. The company threatened to issue a “last, best and final” proposal if we would not agree to certain bargaining dates. When we informed them that we were unable to agree to the certain specific dates that management was demanding, the company issued that “last, best and final” proposal. This violates labor law on several counts. Bargaining dates must be mutually agreeable and not something that one side dictates to another. In addition, a “last, best and final” proposal is something that is normally given after all attempts at a mutual agreement have been exhausted. It is not supposed to be used as a punitive tool to force the union to meet before it is ready to resume discussions. We believe the company’s actions are premature, punitive, regressive and illegal retaliation for our refusal to be unnecessarily rushed back to the table, as well as retaliation for Guild members daring to reject their previous package offer. We are contemplating additional charges with the NLRB.

The company did this after accusing the Guild in a meeting last Friday of “stalling” after we asked for an extra week to reconstitute our bargaining committee, which was devastated by layoffs of team members Sylvia Halladay and Michelle Watson. Simply put, the company still wants at least a 12 percent pay cut from the Guild-represented employees. See below for more details about what the company is now seeking. We also asked management to provide us with answers to an information request that they have had for many weeks now, and the company told us that their response to our request for information was contingent on our agreeing to their bargaining dates (another violation of labor law). They did eventually provide us with a response but it is lacking in any substantial details.

Star management and Gannett corporate lawyers want people to believe that we are unduly dragging out negotiations. Given the circumstances, we firmly believe we are acting appropriately in seeking the time to fully reconstitute our bargaining committee and seeking more information about the company’s supposed financial needs. We have NEVER refused to bargain; we have not agreed to the company’s timetable as to when the next meetings will take place and as a result, they have resorted to bully tactics. By the way, the company has never given us any explanation why they feel the meetings must take place right away.

Our motto since talks began in January is “Negotiate, don’t dictate” and we have sacrificed our pay through two furloughs and lost valued comrades. Given the economic climate, we believe that Guild members would agree to a wage freeze for two years and might accept some type of pay cut – especially if that cut isn’t permanent, or would improve when Gannett sees ad revenues improve.

But Gannett is claiming economic needs without providing proof, and they have so far failed to provide any relevant information to us regarding their justification for a double-digit percentage pay reduction. Guild President Tom Spalding asked Indy Star Publisher Michael G. Kane for an explanation of the numbers and was rebuffed, as many of you heard.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service is an agency of the United States government that handles arbitration and mediation of labor disputes and contract negotiations. We are hopeful that the neutral mediator will be of assistance in reaching understandings that can lead to a finalized tentative agreement that both sides can accept. As we said before, we’re waiting to see if the company will accept the mediator’s invitation to meet.

Further complicating these negotiations is the fact that the company has been sending out mixed messages. They started on April 17, when we were told in a memo: “While Star Media has seen similar economic impact on our local business, we were able to fare better than the company as a whole.” They continued July 16, when Robert J. Dickey told analysts during a Gannett 2^nd quarter earnings call: “I would tell you that our interstate group, which is Indianapolis, Midwest portion of the country, right now is our strongest performer.”

Another issue: The copy of the company’s last, best and final contract offer was purported by their side to (except for the wage proposal) to be identical to the tentative agreement previously provided to the Union – the deal that membership rejected 97-9 on June 30. Upon review, however, we find that the proposal is nowhere near identical and in fact we have identified a number of significant differences between this proposal and the previous package that was presented to Guild membership for a vote. This makes us wonder if we have received an incorrect version of their offer or if the company is being disingenuous.

How it shakes out (this is our initial review of their proposal and should not be considered a complete inventory of changes at this time):

• An immediate 12 percent pay cut for all Guild represented employees, rather than a split 8% and 4% as in the rejected offer.
• No pay increases for the two-year term of the contract, same as rejected offer.
• Wage scales remain but no one advances for term of contract, same as rejected offer.
• It completely eliminates merit pool language; rejected offer kept the merit pool language but the merit pool went dormant. New language would give managers a great deal of discretion regarding future merit pay increases.
• Seniority language related to layoffs is much worse than the rejected offer.
• Same 10 jobs lose OT.
• More Guild positions become exempted than in rejected agreement.
• Still allows paraprofessionals to write stories.
• Still adds “custom publications” to management rights section.
• Still adds “flexibility” language that leaves advertorial/editorial decisions to sole discretion of publisher and now does not include any exclusions of any classifications; rejected agreement excepted reporters, copy editors and photographers from advertorial work.

Changes from current contract there were not in rejected offer:

• Outsourcing language has been put back in the offer; this was not in the rejected contract offer.
• It eliminates the language that outlined how previous experience was used to figure out where new employees would start on the pay scale.
• Adds a clause to sentence on poor review not being reason to reduce pay that says, “unless the Employer determines that a consistently poor performance rating in a current job classification merits a job transfer to a lower classification in lieu of termination.”
• Employees who are removed from their positions by the company may move into lower paying jobs but only with Employer approval; current contract left decision to leave position for lower paying job to the employee.
• Changes notification time of permanent change in work day (8 to 10 hours or 10 to 8 hours) to two weeks; current contract calls for 30 days notice.
• Eliminates daily overtime.
• Call backs guaranteed 3 hours of straight time minimum; current contract calls for 3 hours of OT minimum.
• Allows scheduling of split days off for reporters based on requirements of beat.

View a PDF copy of the company’s contract proposal

And finally, it is uncertain whether the company is still demanding that the Guild drop our current arbitration on the December layoffs.

We’ll continue to fight on your behalf.

We are planning an internal survey to reassess what our members can live with.

Sincerely,
Tom Spalding
President, Indianapolis Newspaper Guild

In consultation with our International

The membership of the Indianapolis Newspaper Guild voted 97-9 today to reject a two-year contract proposal originally put forth by the company April 15. Because this was not a last, final offer the union bargaining team looks forward to resuming negotiations with representatives of Gannett and reaching a deal that is acceptable to both the company and to the journalists and building services workers committed to making the Indianapolis Star the best it can be.