Ratification vote set for August 5

The Guild and Time Inc. have agreed on final language for a three-year contract that extends through Feb. 1, 2013. The new contract provides for guaranteed yearly raises of 1.5%, 2% and 2%, to be given upon ratification, on Feb. 1, 2011, and on Feb. 1, 2012, respectively. These raises will also be added to the current minimum pay scales each year, in the same percentages. Additional merit-pay increases will be at the sole discretion of the company but are in no way prohibited by the contract.

The contract will be voted upon at 1 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 5, in the 31^st-floor conference room at Sports Illustrated. We hope that all members in good standing attend. If you are currently not a member and want to join before the vote, please contact Membership Chairperson Bernice Rohret (212-522-4561) or Unit Chairperson John Shostrom (212-522-3965).

“Missing persons” added to Guild coverage

A big advance was made by the Guild in this contract: The resolution of the longstanding “missing persons” dispute over Guild coverage in the Art and Photo departments has resulted in almost 20 Employees being newly covered by the Guild. In the ever-shrinking world of Time Inc. employment, this is a major victory.

The negotiations, held in off-the-record sessions in an effort to streamline them and reach a speedier conclusion than in previous years, appeared to be heading in a very positive direction when Time Warner announced the freezing of pensions for all of its employees, including Guild-represented Time Warner employees. The Guild was unable to “unfreeze” those pensions.

Guild-only cash payments

The contract settlement, however, includes three yearly cash payments in January of 2011, 2012 and 2013 to all Guild-covered Employees with at least two years of service, with the size of the payments being based on seniority. These payments range from a three-year total of $1,000 for 2- to 5-year Employees to a three-year total of $7,000 for Employees with more than 20 years of service. These payments are in addition to the wage increases negotiated in the contract, and only Guild-represented employees will receive these payments.

Another element of the contract is a modification and expansion of the Guild’s agreement with Time Inc. regarding non-Guild-covered work (see “Dot-Com Work Isn’t Mandatory — Not Even in Los Angeles,” Jan. 12, 2010). The new Side Letter in the contract retains the protections of the earlier agreement and expands it to other non-Guild-covered entities, whether print or digital. As before with the dotcoms, an employee from a non-Guild-covered area “regularly performing any work or services for any entity covered by the collective bargaining agreement with the Guild shall be considered a Guild-covered Employee.”

A partial giveback

The only negative item in what is basically a contract renewal involves the holiday Dark Week provision. In the last Contract, mindful that “past practices” not enshrined in the contract are vulnerable to company attack, the Guild got Time Inc. to list Dark Week as a protected “past practice” that the company would observe going forward.

From the first day of the 2010 negotiations, Time Inc. was insistent that Dark Week had to end; though the Guild had the leverage of the current language to fight back, eventually the two sides settled on a compromise: Dark Week would continue for sure in December 2010, but starting in 2011 it would no longer be a protected “past practice.” The Guild is quite unclear as to the advantage of the company’s making employees hang out in the office over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays; the Guild negotiators asked over and over what the point was, but no satisfactory answer was ever given.

The Guild hopes that the Dark Week practice will continue past December 2010, but that decision will be up to management.

A related proposal by the company to force a buyout of already-earned sabbaticals was rejected by the Guild. Though the company is working us much, much harder than ever, it’s apparently obsessed with not compensating us for any time not spent in the office.

The Guild Negotiating Committee, led by New York Local President Bill O’Meara and Time Inc. Local Representative Bob Townsend, and including Sports Illustrated’s John Shostrom, Jill Jaroff and Bernice Rohret and Fortune’s Edith Fried, unanimously recommends the ratification of this contract. After the brutal negotiations of 2007 and the combination of the Great Recession and the “Death of Print” trend since that contract was signed, the Guild is very happy to have gotten a basically retrogression-free contract with guaranteed raises every year.

Coming soon: Sports Illustrated arbitration settlement

The Guild also simultaneously negotiated a settlement of an arbitration the Guild won regarding the Sports Illustrated Copy Editors and Photographers, 17 of whom were reduced to part-time status on Jan. 1, 2009 (see “No, You Can’t!” June 17, 2010). An On Time describing that settlement will follow shortly.