March 12, 2004

TENTATIVE AGREEMENT REACHED ON NEW FOUR-YEAR GUILD CONTRACT

PACT WOULD YIELD 12.55% SALARY HIKE

FOR MEMBERS OVER LIFE OF THE CONTRACT

NO GIVEBACKS

RATIFICATION MEETING SCHEDULED FOR MARCH 22

AT 12:30 P.M. IN ROOMS 607-608

Guild and Scholastic negotiating teams reached tentative agreement on a four-year extension of the current contract on March 1.  The new Agreement will run through 2008.

What does “tentative” mean in this case?  It means that Scholastic Guild members have the authority to accept or reject the agreement achieved by your union representatives.  Guild members in good standing may attend the ratification meeting and vote on the contract extension.  Everything about the contract extension will be explained and members will be free to ask questions.

Here, in summary, are the improvements in the Agreement:

1.                  General Salary Increase:  Effective in mid-June of 2004, in 2005, in 2006, and in 2007, Guild members will receive guaranteed salary hikes of 3 percent.  The compounded increase over the four-year agreement is 12.55%.

2.                  Application of the general increase to actual salaries as well as to the Minimum Wage Schedule:  This is an important provision that has not always been included in every Scholastic-Guild contract.  It ensures that the salaries of new employees do not fall behind those of current employees, thus creating a two-tier salary system.

3.                  Merit Pay:  The company agrees not to exclude Guild members, as a class, from merit raises.  You may recall that the company did attempt this exclusion last October.  The Guild was able to reverse this attempt and has now made class exclusion a violation of the contract.

4.                  Effective February 14, 2004, the company agrees to add four job titles to the contract: assistant digital imager, digital imager, senior digital manager, and senior associate editor.  To correct a management error in slotting one of these positions, the person in that job will receive a retroactive salary increase of more than $1,000 for the past year.

5.                  No Retrogressions:  You may recall that, at the January 16 meeting, we discussed the danger of retrogressions.  Companies often put their own list of demands on the table, demands that are designed to take back benefits already guaranteed by the contract.  Here at Scholastic, it has sometimes taken up to a year to battle against a flood of company-proposed retrogressions.  This year, none was proposed

A final word:  You may recall management’s memo of last September that explained that, because of difficult economic times, merit raises [for non-Guild staffers] would be limited to an average of 2 percent.  (Many such employees received 1.5 percent and many received nothing.)  This occurred in the same year that Guild members received 4 percent.

In view of the current harsh economic realities, we believe the Guild came out much better than could have been expected.  We trust you’ll agree.

SEE YOU ON MARCH 22.

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03/12/04