January 5, 2007
Unhappy New Year (Part 1)
Cold greetings from Time Inc. at first 2007 meeting
The contract negotiations between Time Inc. and The Newspaper Guild continued on Wednesday, January 3, but the first session of the new year held no cheer for the company’s employees, whether Guild-covered or not.
When asked by the Guild what gains it could look forward to in the contract talks, the company’s outside lawyer said that Time Inc. hoped “to keep as many people as possible employed in this wonderful company.”
He doesn’t have to worry about being laid off later this month, because he isn’t employed by Time Inc.
Abominable “no” man
Management’s hired gun, Jonathan Sulds of the Akin Gump law firm, leads Time Inc.’s negotiating “team,” which consists solely of him, his assistant, and two lawyers from the company’s HR department. Unlike in every previous negotiation (except for the two renewals in 2001 and 2004), there are no managers from the magazines on the team, no one who works with us and could convey some sense of the reality of what we – and they – do in our jobs every day.
By contrast, Sulds and the “team” are there to just say no. On January 3, they said no to guaranteeing the Contract past the expiration date of February 1, ridiculed the Guild’s request that Time Inc. put its proposals in a readable form (while finally saying they’d consider doing so), and said no to allowing a Guild shop. It happened so often that Sulds finally tired of saying no, saying he would just listen as the Guild negotiators described in detail some of their proposals for a better contract (such as not being required to sign a release in order to collect severance pay).
Who’s in charge?
When Bob Townsend, the Time Inc. Guild’s Local Representative and lead negotiator in the talks, pointed out the unusual composition of management’s team, Sulds replied, “The people you’re looking at have the knowledge and authority to make a deal. The company chooses to deal in the way it chooses to deal.”
Long experience in these matters has taught the Guild that Sulds’s first statement is not accurate. He can say no, but he can’t say yes. The three lawyers have their marching orders and are in no way free agents to conclude a deal.
His second statement helps explain the streamlined team. Time Inc. is choosing to exclude from the team the many managers who would be hurt by the company’s proposals; it doesn’t want them to hear the Guild’s arguments in person.
And what is the goal?
The only management proposal discussed on January 3 was its night-work bonus proposal. This would move the night work bonus threshold to “after 9 p.m.” from the current “after 8 p.m.” and exclude from night pay all the hours worked until 9 p.m. It would also increase the differential for “work actually performed by a Regular or Regular Part Time Employee” after 9 p.m. from 10% to 50%, paying it at time-and-a-half as if it were overtime.
(The Guild is unclear what the meaning is of the change from the current “Employee … working on a regular schedule calling for work” to the proposed “work actually performed.” We suspect, in this case, that the devil is in the details.)
In the discussion the Guild pointed out that a major purpose of whole-shift NWB was to create a disincentive to the company’s creating work schedules disruptive to family life, and that on a more positive note, NWB was an acknowledgement of, and recognition for, the employee’s working long hours and hard shifts.
Sulds’s reply was odd, considering that the two sides have just begun to talk: “If that’s the philosophy that is animating these talks, we’re going to get to impasse quickly.”
“Impasse” is short for ballgame over, company wins. In an impasse situation, the company would get to impose its “last, best offer” on the Guild. So in the first minutes of discussing its first proposal, Time Inc. is not-so-subtly tipping its hand on its preferred outcome. Why else bring up impasse at this point?
# # # # #
1/05/07