Contract negotiations with Thomson Reuters management are expected to start by the end of this month, and five Guild members have been appointed to the bargaining committee by Reuters Unit Chair Debby Zabarenko. Guild Representative John Phillips, a longtime Reuters journalist now working for the New York Guild, also will be at the table, with support from Local Secretary-Treasurer Peter Szekely, currently on leave from Reuters.

Our bargaining team includes Guild members from Editorial, Technical and Television. In alphabetical order, they are:

Leslie Adler, a Desk Editor on the Treasuries Desk in New York, has worked for Reuters 21 years. Before coming to New York in 2001, she had postings in London, Brussels, Los Angeles, Detroit and Chicago. She has also worked in Equities and covered general news.

Tony Barone has worked for Reuters 14 years. He is a steward and a Master Room Control Operator for Reuters Video in New York, responsible for overseeing the many incoming and outgoing global TV feeds and fixing problems, often on the fly, to keep the operations humming.

Tom Doggett, a steward in the Washington Bureau, joined Reuters 11 years ago and covers energy issues – as he says, he’s seen crude oil go from $11 a barrel to $147 (and back down to whatever).

Dale Rippe, unit first vice chair, started at Reuters in 1979 as a Senior Technician in New York and was promoted to Technician-In-Charge in 1982, transferring to Hauppauge in 1983, where he is in charge of NMG Material Control Logistics at 90 David’s Drive. Dale has been involved in every round of contract talks since 1990.

Dan Trotta has worked for Reuters for more than 15 years, starting as a stringer in Nicaragua, joining Reuters staff in Mexico and later moving to Spain. He came to New York in 2005 as a general assignment reporter and joined the Guild that year.

Thanks to all who took the time to complete the Guild Survey – more than 50 percent of you did, and of those, more than 100 wrote comments beyond filling out the form. All of these responses help Guild negotiators know which issues are most important to you.

The contract now in force runs through February 28, 2009; if no agreement is reached by then, an “evergreen clause” keeps the terms and conditions of the present contract in effect while negotiations continue.

On September 18, Reuters management declared that the global financial crisis had become a “news emergency.” Under the contract (Article IX, Section 4), that allows managers to make short-notice changes to the work schedules of journalists involved in covering the story without extra pay. Management also asserts that a “news emergency” allows them to assign non-Guild people to do Guild work, but the Guild disputes that.

Management originally had estimated that the “news emergency” would last for about two weeks. To date, management has not given a date for it to end. The Guild will continue to monitor the situation.

Since Guild members were asked to insert their current performance goals into the new appraisal system (OPM) a few weeks ago, the Guild has had substantial back-and-forth communication with management. Our basic position on appraisals stands: for your own protection, participate as little as possible, avoid setting objectives and don't sign anything. However, we have been assured in writing by HR Vice President Glen Russo, who handles labor relations, that this is simply a clerical chore. He also said that Guild members who refuse a directive to do it could be considered insubordinate.

Russo further said that transferring objectives from the old system to the new one does not mean you're accepting management's targets for you. “The function of inserting the objectives has nothing to do with creating or agreeing to the objectives,” he wrote.

Given this assurance, Unit Chair Debby Zabarenko said, “I can advise you to do the cut-and-paste job some managers are insisting on, knowing you are not agreeing to anything by doing so.”

Editorial staffers were recently asked to "input your goals" to the new system by October 17 in an e-mail from Brian Rhoads, the new managing editor, Americas, (Betty Wong's old job). But Rhoads also made clear that “This step does not require you to create goals, but only to input them into the OPM system.

It's hard to understand why managers can't manage and actually perform this clerical work themselves. But if they insist that Guild members have to do it, please make sure you do this completely on company time. If it's unclear about exactly how to do this chore, ask your manager to show you where your old goals are and where management wants them "input" into the new system.