January 2, 2007

 

We Are the Company – All of Us

 

Management proposals hurt everyone, including managers

 

As the Newspaper Guild and Time Inc. management continue their negotiations, it’s very important to remember both what is at stake and whom the proposals will affect.

 

Time Warner is a very big company, with about 90,000 employees, and Time Inc. is a fairly large chunk of Time Warner, with about 12,000 employees. Of these only about 525 are covered by the Guild contract.

 

The contract, for all intents and purposes, “covers” everyone

 

If you’re one of the 11,500 or so non-Guild-covered employees, you won’t be affected by what happens, right?

 

Not exactly. Time Inc. doesn’t like to have different rules and benefits for different employees. Almost anything the Guild has won for its covered employees gets given to all the other employees. Management confirmed that at an arbitration last month.

 

The company’s director of employment law testified that non-Guild employees got almost all the goodies that Guild-covered ones get: She testified that the policies are identical for vacations, sabbaticals, holidays, medical benefits, car and meal allowance, and night-work bonus.

 

The flip side? Everything that gets taken away from the Guild gets taken away from everyone! And everything proposed by the company in these contract negotiations (see On Time #17, Dec. 15) including the lengthening of the workweek, the tremendous reduction in severance pay, and the discontinuance of sabbatical leaves would already have been taken away long ago if the company had its way.

 

Without the Guild as a countervailing force, the company’s top management would have dictated its desires to all employees unopposed. If you don’t like the conditions here, work somewhere else is the mantra of the bosses of most non-unionized workplaces.

 

There are many employees who work in a Guild covered job, but never joined the Guild. Whenever the subject of Guild membership comes up, Guild dues are inevitably brought up – and they should be. Arbitrations, legal fees, and professional representation cost money. Your dues pay the bills. Guild dues are 1.38% of members’ basic weekly salary. New members pay the lowest of any union, an initiation fee of only $5.00, on a one-time only basis and if you’ve been a Guild member in a previous job, you don’t even have to pay that.

 

There is strength and power in numbers. Your co-workers need to be reminded that the benefits they enjoy are a product of the many years of Guild’s action. They should be reminded as well that those benefits are being eroded and that the stronger in members the Guild is, the more difficulty management will have in eradicating our benefits completely.

 

It’s about time you stepped up to the plate!

 

Contact Membership Chair Alex Blanco at 212-522-4187 or Guild Rep. Bob Townsend at 212-732-1532

 

The next meeting with management is scheduled for Wednesday, January 3, 2007, at 2:15 p.m. in a conference room 40 A&B at the Time and Life Building.

 

JOIN TODAY!! TOMORROW MAY BE TOO LATE!!

 

# # # # #

1/02/07