March 10, 2008

The OTHER Election

 Why Every Reuters Vote Counts

in Newspaper Guild Election

Besides voting for a new U.S. president this year, you have another choice to make as a member of the Reuters unit of The Newspaper Guild: you have the chance to help pick the next president, secretary-treasurer and international chair of The Newspaper Guild (TNG), commonly called the International, which represents our interests as part of the Communications Workers of America, our parent union.

For the top TNG job, the candidates are incumbent President Linda Foley and current Secretary-Treasurer Bernie Lunzer. You can read more about them, their plans and their running mates online at Lunzer’s campaign site www.astrongerguild.org and Foley’s campaign site www.teamguild.org.

The election will be held in April by mail; your ballot will be sent to your home address and you’ll vote by filling it out and mailing it back in a postage-paid envelope. Many of you have not voted for TNG leadership before, and there’s a good reason for that – contested elections are rare in this union. The last one was in 1995.

Whoever you choose, it’s critical that you do vote. Here’s why:

Reuters is among the largest units in one of the largest locals – the New York local -- of The Newspaper Guild. Our size means we get a certain amount of assistance and attention from TNG as well as from the CWA. For example, the Guild has helped us form an alliance of union workers at Reuters and Thomson on both sides of the Atlantic as the Thomson deal goes forward. We also have access to TNG research on issues facing the media and, in turn, its unions, as well as input on how best to approach the ever-changing media industry.

 As TNG members, we also get a say, as all locals do, in how The Newspaper Guild is run. Our unit chair, Debby Zabarenko, is on the Guild’s Executive Council, and that gives us increased access to union leaders at the national and international level.

But if only a small percentage of our members vote in this election, The Newspaper Guild leaders may think, rightly or wrongly, that we just don’t care, and the attention we have claimed in the past may go to other units. In an era where Guild protection is something even managers covet, that kind of apathy would be a mistake.

We understand all the competing claims on your time. Please spend a bit of it on this election. You’ll be hearing more about it in the coming weeks.

It’s Your Time. Don’t Give It Away.

Speaking of time, please don’t give it away to Reuters in the form of unpaid overtime. Most managers understand that our Contract entitles Guild members to compensation either in overtime pay or time off for extra hours we work. But some members of our Guild sometimes work for nothing. This simply makes no sense, for a lot of reasons.

By donating your work to Reuters, you’re short-changing yourself. You are also giving your manager an incorrect idea of how much time it takes to do your job, so the next time they put a budget together, they’ll have a mistaken cost estimate and very well could think that they can produce our product with fewer Guild members.

Taking a larger view, working for nothing undermines our Contract. If Guild workers don’t bother to claim the compensation that our negotiators bargained for, managers are likely to say next time, “Well, you aren’t using that overtime or comp time, so maybe we don’t need that in the next agreement.” And don’t forget: the current Contract expires on February 28, 2009, less than a year from now. The first talks to negotiate a new Contract should begin in October 2008.

A Bit More In Your Paycheck

Your next paycheck should reflect a 3.5 percent wage increase as agreed in our Contract. Watch for it. It went into effect on March 1.

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