June 30, 2006

GUILD BULLETIN

S&P, NEWSWEEK RATIFY NEW PACTS

 

      Guild members at Newsweek and Standard & Poor’s overwhelmingly ratified new contracts in June.

 

     S&P’s new 5-year pact provides pay increases totaling 19.6% over five years and an agreement on a financial-markets trading policy for Guild members that is less onerous than the one management added to their demands late in the negotiations.

 

    S&P Guild members, voted 275-10 for their new contract that calls for a 3.75% raise retroactive to April 1, 2005; another 3.75% hike from April 1, 2005 and a third 3.75% increase on the same date in 2007. The final two years of the contract – 2008 and 2009 – provide for 3.5% raises each year.

 

     Guild members at Newsweek agreed by a vote of 20-0 to a new three-year contract, calling for better wage hikes than in the previous contract and limiting the use of unpaid interns, while increasing the pay of other interns.

 

     Virtually all of Newsweek’s Guild-covered employees will receive a one-time, 3% non-compounded bonus this year based on their 2005 earnings and 3% compounded pay raises for the next two years. Seniority rights in layoffs have been clarified and improved.

 

S&P DEAL EASES DEMANDS ON TRADING LIMITS

 

    A unified membership successfully staved off an ill-conceived management demand that Guild members be prohibited from selling their financial-markets holdings for 60 days after purchase. Management cited their concern about insider trading violations as the reason for their position. But the Unit’s Bargaining Committee, led by New York Local Guild President Barry Lipton, Secretary/Treasurer Bill O’Meara and Unit Chairperson Ed Fannon, strongly resisted and whittled that demand down to at first 45 days and then to 35 days.

 

     Guild negotiators also trimmed management’s other proposals concerning the Personal Securities Trading System and got management to agree that any expansion of the trading policy beyond Credit Market Services be negotiated with the Guild.

 

     “The strength of the membership in support of their Bargaining Committee was crucial in securing the contract and in rejecting the most intrusive aspects of the Performance Management Program that the company imposed on non-Guild employees,” Lipton said.

 

     In addition, the new S&P deal clarifies the rights of Guild-represented workers in branch offices and gained management’s pledge to annually discuss any potential changes to the health-care plan.

 

    The S&P Unit’s bargaining Committee also included Local Representative Bob Townsend, Randye Gilliam, Andreea Popa, Joycelyn Brathwaite, Carol Wood, and Peter Burke.

 

NEWSWEEK PACT LIMITS USE OF UNPAID INTERNS

 

     The Newsweek contract, which runs until January 1, 2009, calls for a 13-week limit on management’s use of unpaid “scholastic” interns and an improvement in the wages of paid interns, as well as their coverage under the contract. Scholastic interns typically earn college credits for their work.

 

     Guild negotiators at Newsweek, again led by Lipton, with strong support from the Bargaining Committee and Unit members, were able to jettison management’s insistence that they could force all Guild-covered employees to take two or three weeks of vacation time linked to the publication of any double issues of the magazine. Under terms of the new contract, management may force some staffers to take vacation time in the dark week – when no magazine is published - that falls between Christmas and the New Year.

 

     The Newsweek agreement also forces management to make their work scheduling practices more user-friendly.

 

     Guild negotiators, who also included Local Representative Dona Fowler, Chairperson Myra Kreiman, Vic Fabris and Temma Ehrenfeld, also reaffirmed that company-wide seniority will count in layoffs. But an employee who joins a department less than six months before it is targeted for layoffs will be subject to seniority in classification there.

 

    Guild negotiators, however, insisted that if management wants to lay off a more senior employee in favor of one with less service, management must demonstrate that the junior worker’s performance is “substantially superior” to the senior employee’s. Previously, the performance needed to be only “superior.”

 

     If a layoff occurs, the new deal allows Guild-covered employees to bump down to a job they held as long as five years earlier, instead of the old three-year limit. And those who bump down will have a month to prove to management that they can still perform the job instead of the single week that was in the previous contract.

 

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06/30/06