August 23, 2001 

 

RING-AROUND-A-ROSY,

 STANDARD & POOR’S 

STYLE

 

            When you’re in the Guild, the contract guarantees you certain pay raises on certain dates. 

Right? 

The company says not necessarily. Not if you’re on Short-Term Disability. 

One Guild-covered employee last year was out on maternity leave – and then on vacation – when she was due a contractual increase and didn’t get the increase until she returned to work. 

At the risk of being accused of speaking ill of the dearly departed, we played Ring-Around-A-Rosy for months with Bob Temme, the recently retired Vice President of Human Resources, on this one. 

Now we’ve filed for arbitration in the case. 

Temme told us straight out it was impossible for Standard & Poor’s to increase the employee’s salary when she was on maternity leave because the Plan Document of the Salary Continuation Program dictates that employees get the salary they were receiving when they left on disability. 

So, obviously, we asked Temme for a copy the Plan Document. 

What Temme provided us with was a description of the Short-Term Disability Plan from S&P’s Benefits Handbook. He said it would tell us everything we wanted to know about the Short-Term Disability Plan. 

We read it and reread it and couldn’t find anything that said you got paid what you were making when you left on disability and didn’t receive pay increases you were due when you were due them. 

That may be true, Temme said, but it’s in the Plan Document. 

So, obviously, once again, we asked for the Plan Document. 

Weeks passed and we didn’t receive it. So we asked again.

Finally, Temme told us that the language to which he was referring didn’t appear in the Plan Document. But, he said, that’s the way it has always been done at Standard & Poor’s. You get your pay increase when you return from your leave of absence. 

So, naturally, we asked Temme for examples. 

He could give us only one. 

Temme provided us with documents he said showed that Joanne Hunter went on a maternity leave November 18, 1999. She would have been due a contractual increase on December 27, 1999. But she didn’t receive the increase until she returned to work on June 6, 2000. 

So, we contacted Joanne Hunter. And you won’t believe what we found out! She never returned to S&P from maternity leave! So, of course, the Guild was never made aware she didn’t get the pay increase when it was due. Otherwise, we would have filed a grievance on her behalf. In fact, she’s part of the arbitration we’ve filed on the current case. 

During the grievance session, Temme said it doesn’t matter that the S&P Handbook fails to say we don’t get contractual raises when we’re on short-term disability. He said it doesn’t matter that language doesn’t appear in the Plan Document. He said McGraw-Hill doesn’t allow for raises to be given when a person is on short-term disability and the contract clearly states that Guild-covered employees will participate in short-term disability “under the same terms, conditions and privileges as all other employees of the Publisher.” 

But the only precedent he could give us for that concerned a Guild employee, who didn’t return from maternity leave. And, of course, he couldn’t give us a precedent for a non-Guild employee not receiving a contractual raise prior to returning from short-term disability because non-Guild people at McGraw-Hill don’t have contracts. 

If you’ve been on short-term disability and didn’t receive a pay increase when you should have, contact Unit Chairperson Ed Fannon at 438-3804 or Local Representative Bob Townsend at 730-1532. S&P may owe you money. If you’ve been out on short-term disability and have received a pay increase in the benefit, contact us. That would shoot another large hole in their argument. 

Then there’s also the question of the contractual increase not being reflected in the grievant’s pay when she was on vacation. Temme didn’t even have an argument for that one. In fact, he admitted we were right on that score. But he didn’t want to correct that error unless we came to an agreement on the entire dispute. 

Another case going to arbitration concerns an employee who was fired several days after he resigned and his resignation was accepted by the company. That would appear to be S&P’s new twist to the old refrain: “You can’t fire me; I quit.”

 

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 08/23/01