February 1 vote to be held to lock in raises and guarantee the Contract

The Newspaper Guild at Time Inc. will hold a general meeting of the membership on February 1 for the purpose of ratifying the contract that was negotiated on January 4. The meeting will be held in Money magazine’s 31^st floor conference room in the Time & Life Building from 3p.m. to 4 p.m. All Guild members are eligible to vote, and all managers are required to give Guild members in their areas release time to come to the meeting and vote.

The new three-year contract extension, which if ratified will take effect this February 1 and expire on January 31, 2004, provides for average raises of 4% for each year for Guild-covered employees. The guaranteed portion of the raises (for those making $61,500 or less as of January 31, 2001) is 2.4% for the February 1, 2001, raise; 2% for the February 1, 2002, raise; and 2% for the February 1, 2003, raise. The remaining part of the raise is the merit pool, which is given out at the discretion of management: 1.6% in 2001, 2% in 2002 and 2% in 2003.

The minimum salaries will go up each year for all groups of guild-covered employees, and the cut-off is being raised by $6,000, to $61,500. All Guild-covered employees making more than this figure are not guaranteed annual raises but are guaranteed a total raise of at least $3,639 over the life of the contract.

Perhaps the most important feature of the contract is the brand-new security clause, which “guarantees that this contract will remain in full force and effect notwithstanding the merger between Time Warner Inc. and AOL.” This language assures that the contract can’t be weakened before February 1, 2004, no matter what AOL may want to do.

The Guild and the company have also settled the Guild’s challenges to the Compliance Manual and the 2000 Freelance Guidelines, to the great advantage of Guild-covered employees. The company agreed to a full rollback of the new and burdensome elements contained in both items, for Guild-covered employees only.

The Guild Negotiating committee, led by New York Newspaper Guild President Barry Lipton and Time Inc. Unit Chairperson John Shostrom, enthusiastically endorses this contract, which contains no givebacks and was negotiated almost a month before the previous one is to expire.

Please come on February 1 and let your voices be heard! It’s your contract, and your strength and loyalty throughout the Guild’s decades at Time Inc. has made this important settlement possible.

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