December 28, 2005
Company Tries to Force
Trading Policy on the Guild
In an attempt to show co-operation, the Guild negotiating committee agreed to a meeting with the company Tuesday in an effort to reach an agreement on one single issue, a trading policy, that Standard & Poor’s claimed it needed an agreement on before the end of the year.
The union met with S&P negotiators on that single item despite the fact that Unit Chairperson Ed Fannon was unavailable due to his recent heart attack.
But our best efforts at reaching a settlement on the policy were stymied when management took a hard-line stance and wouldn’t move off of key points in its proposal that would be intolerable to our members.
After a lengthy session, the union’s lead negotiator, N.Y. Guild President Barry Lipton, noting the number of issues that still separated the parties, suggested that the trading policy be again rolled into the general contract negotiations and talked about again in a few weeks when Fannon is well enough to return to the table.
Suggesting that S&P might implement the trading policy on the first of the year without the Guild’s approval or agreement, the company’s lead negotiator, Steve Macri, an attorney from the firm of Putney, Twombley, Hall & Hirson, said he wanted to put S&P’s “best offer for resolution of the policy” on the record.
Under labor law, if a true impasse is reached in negotiations on a particular subject, management has the right to implement its “last best offer.”
Lipton warned management’s committee that if it attempted to go to impasse and impose the trading policy, it would be seriously damaging the relationship with the Guild, which has been a good one, and that the Guild will pursue all of its legal options.
It’s the union’s contention that an impasse hasn’t been reached regarding the trading policy. There’s a lot more negotiating to be done.
On the key issues separating the parties regarding the trading policy, here’s the “best offer” that Macri outlined:
· The immediate family, subject to the controls of the trading policy, includes a covered employee’s spouse or domestic partner, minor child, stepchild, grandchild, parent, stepparent, grandparent, sibling, mother- or father-in-law, sister- or brother-in-law, and son- or daughter-in-law, including adoptive and guardian relationships, in each case, sharing the same household as the covered employee, and any entity or trust owned or controlled by a person named above.
· All transactions must be pre-approved, a provision that will take an indeterminate length of time.
· In short-term trading, a stock must be held for 45 days before it can be sold for a profit.
· The policy will apply to Ratings Services, Corporate and Government, Segment People, Risk Solutions, Performance and Evaluation Services, Securities Services and Cusip.
· The company accepted the Guild’s proposal that compliance reports be made on a semi-annual basis rather than quarterly.
· Covered employees and immediate family are prohibited from buying/owning securities that constitute 1% or more of the outstanding shares of any public corporation without specific written approval.
“We’re prepared to resume discussion,” Lipton told the company. “It’s our proposal to continue bargaining on all of these issues as soon as we can reconstitute the full committee.”
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12/28/05