August 13,  2004

 

 

AGREEMENT REACHED

AT HUDSON NEWS

__________

 

THREE-YEAR CONTRACT EXTENSION

GIVES MEMBERS RAISES, BONUSES!

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NO BENEFITS TAKEN FROM CONTRACT!

 New York Newspaper Guild negotiators and officials of Hudson News reached a tentative agreement late last Wednesday night on a three-year contract extension that would provide employees with approximately 9% in wage increases, as well as bonuses.

Under the agreement, which will be voted on by Hudson News Guild members next Thursday, all Guild-represented employees who have worked at Hudson News for more than seven years, will receive a “special payment” equal to a week’s salary, as soon as possible after the contract is accepted. Union represented employees who have worked at Hudson News between two and seven years will be given a $200 bonus and employees who have worked between 60 days and two years will receive $100. The payments are in settlement of the legal case the Guild filed to get the Christmas bonus not received last year and also provides for a bonus for this coming Christmas as well. Looking ahead to future years, the Guild and Hudson News have agreed on a formula for Christmas bonuses in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

The entire Hudson News Guild negotiating committee, which was led by N.Y. Guild President Barry Lipton, Secretary-Treasurer Bill O’Meara, and Local Representative Bob Townsend, unanimously approved the contract and recommend the settlement be accepted. The remainder of the committee included Guild Unit Chairperson Balal Ahmad, Grievance Chairperson Stella John, Khamuaia Shakoor (Grand Central Station), Laleta Sarabdial (Penn Station), Ismail Hussain (Port Authority Bus Terminal) and Jason Fuentes (Penn Station).

The negotiation was a difficult one. Terry Lent, Hudson News Vice President, Operations, said everybody believes Hudson News is doing well financially because they recently bought W.H. Smith stores. He said if Hudson News officials could turn back the clock, however, they probably wouldn’t buy W.H. Smith today. “The economics of Hudson News are not good,” he said.

Lent, Director of Labor Relations Howard Spatz and Human Resource Director Fehmi Malik said they wanted a five-year extension to the contract with no raise at all in the first year. They offered an 8-cent-an-hour raise in the second year, 8 cents in the third, 8 cents in the fourth and another wage freeze (no raise) in the fifth year. It took a lot of arguing to get them to move from that position.

Hudson News officials also wanted to pay its employees every two weeks instead of every week.  Hudson News tried to change from weekly paydays to every-other-week paydays at the start of this year. The Guild fought them, taking them to court and the union was successful in keeping paydays weekly.

All across the country, Hudson News has changed to bi-weekly (every two weeks) paydays for its other employees and company negotiators said it was too expensive to have a separate pay cycle for employees who are in the union. Eventually we got them to give up that demand and for the entire three-year extension of the contract, Guild members are guaranteed that they will continue to be paid on a weekly basis.

Another thing that Hudson News wanted to do away with was the General Leave guaranteed by the contract. Under the contract, employees in the union have a right to take a leave “for good and sufficient cause” of up to 30 days once every two years. The leave must be approved by management, however.

This has been a valuable benefit to many of our members who have used it to take trips back to their homelands. Hudson News officials said too many people have been taking the leave at the same time, however, and they wanted to cut the General Leave from the contract entirely. They failed, and the General Leave provision is still part of the contract!

In order to make sure it is fairly applied in the future, the Guild and Hudson News agreed to insert language into the contract that says if too many people apply for the leave at the same time, seniority will be used to determine who gets the leave.

Another one of Hudson News’ demands would have crippled the union. They wanted to take the “Guild time” away from the Guild’s Unit Chairperson and Grievance Chairperson. Unit Chairperson Balal Ahmad, and Stella John, as Grievance Chairperson, work half their day for Hudson News and the other half doing Guild business. They spend half their time visiting Hudson News locations and either fixing members’ problems or passing the information along to the Local for action. Hudson News tried to put an end to all that by taking away Balal and Stella’s union time. That’s another thing that Hudson News didn’t accomplish. Balal and Stella’s schedules will not change.

In addition to the bonus after the contract is approved, the Guild and Hudson News have agreed on a formula for future Christmas Bonuses that will be based on how much business the company does. If Hudson News has a year in which gross sales go up by 6%, union members will receive a payment of $100 in December. If sales go up by 10%, union members will get a $200 bonus.

The entire negotiating committee hailed the contract as a superior one and recommended that the members vote for it.  Agreement was reached shortly before midnight Wednesday.

“Your committee is to be congratulated,” President Lipton said after the two grueling days of negotiations. “It’s a very good contract with wage increases for everybody, bonuses, and no loss at all of any of the important benefits in our current agreement.”

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08/13/04