If the Guild is going to take the question of 401(k) improvements to an arbitrator, then the company might put negotiations on hold until the arbitrator’s ruling.

The was the threat made Tuesday by Vice President of Human Resources Bob Temme, who prefaced the remark by saying it wasn’t a threat.

Negotiations were postponed Tuesday because the company’s lead negotiator, Stephen J. Macri, a lawyer with the firm of Putney, Twombly, Hall & Hirson, was ill with the flu.

When the meeting was put off, chief Guild spokesperson Bob Townsend asked for an opportunity to grieve the 401(k) issue.

You’ll all recall that it was at a negotiating session back on Thursday, November 16, the second round of talks between the company and the Guild, that the company offered to make some improvements in our 401(k). The company would:

• Do away with the year’s waiting period before a new employee could participate in the 401 (k).

• Fully vest participants immediately instead of having them partially vested for the first three years of their participation.

• Allow highly compensated employees to contribute up to 15% to the maximum of $10,500. Up until now, highly compensated employees have been capped at a 6% contribution.

• Allow those employees who are not highly compensated, to make a 15% pre-tax contribution as opposed to the 10% pre-tax and 5% post-tax contribution that they’re now allowed.

The company put a price tag on the 401(k) enhancements. They’d give us the new and improved 401(k), Temme and Macri said, only if we’d agree to be paid twice a month (on the first and 15^th) instead of once a week.

And there was another wrinkle. The 401(k) special was a one-day sale. It was good for the day it was offered and the day it was offered only. (Later in that very same negotiation session, the deadline for acceptance was relaxed. But not by much.)

The Guild’s negotiating committee told the company nothing doing. First of, we weren’t going to be rushed to judgment. And, secondly, we needed more to agree to twice-a-month paydays.

By the time we got into the next negotiating session, though, we told the company, hey, wait a minute, we’ve had a chance to study the contract and we’ve discovered we don’t have to trade a thing to get a major chunk of the 401(k) improvements. According to the current contract language, you owe them to us.

The pact reads: "Effective January 1, 1997, employee members may elect to save a percentage (in whole percentages) of their Plan Earnings (salary plus overtime), each year, on a tax-deferred basis, up to the statutory maximum on pre-tax 401(k) elective deferrals under the Internal Revenue Service regulations . . ."

The contract says we "may elect to save . . . up to the statutory maximum." Temme and Macri have been saying the IRS is going to allow highly compensated individuals to contribute 15 % beginning in the first of year. If that’s what the IRS is going to allow, that’s what S&P owes our people the ability to contribute.

In negotiations, Macri told us we were all wet. Due to "safe harbor provisions," he said, the company can’t change the plan to allow 15% deductions from our highly compensated people if it doesn’t also change the plan to knock out the year wait for participation.

Well, if that’s what it takes for S&P to follow the contract, so be it. Knock out the year wait for participation also.

When Tuesday’s negotiating session fell through, we made that argument to Temme and Anna Romano. (Townsend, Unit Chairperson Ed Fannon and Assistant Grievance Chairperson Marilyn Bissell constituted the Guild’s Grievance Committee.)

Temme and Romano told us we were all wet and denied our grievance.

If the Guild takes the case to arbitration, Temme theorized, it could kill any chance of a contract settlement for months to come.

Apparently referring to the twice-a-month paydays, Temme noted: "This is an intricate part of our labor strategy." He indicated it would be impossible to negotiate a contract while an arbitrator determines the fate of the improvements in the 401(k).

Which, of course, the Guild insists, is nonsense. It’s the company that has tied twice-a-month paydays to changes in the 401(k). Certainly S&P and the Guild can talk about one of the issues while the other is being decided by an arbitrator. Certainly a new contract could be negotiated and agreed upon with the 401(k) set aside to be decided by an arbitrator.

Or, perhaps, the arbitration case could be settled in negotiations.

Temme pooh-poohed that suggestion, saying there was no middle ground.

Townsend said there is a middle ground – the 401(k) enhancements the company has suggested could go into effect in 2002.

Temme said the company has already made that offer.

Townsend said the company’s offer came with too steep a price tag – the twice a month paydays.

Temme scoffed at the idea that twice-a-month paydays were any big deal and maintained they were a small price to pay for the improvements S&P is offering in the 401(K).

Townsend told him the overwhelming majority of our members live from week to week have been imploring us to maintain the weekly pay schedule.

Anna Romano said S&P has an Employee Assistance Program and it would be easy enough for concerned employees to get budget assistance and learn how to plan for twice-a-month paydays.

That comes under the heading of simple solutions for complex problems.

Full negotiations are due to resume next Tuesday at the Guild headquarters on Broadway.

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