September 19, 2007
On The Road: Talking to Members
The following is a note to the membership from IAPE President Steve Yount as he continues a visit to IAPE-represented locations across the country.
I spent Monday in Chicago and Tuesday in Dallas talking to IAPE members about both the future of their union — and Dow Jones contract offer the Board recommended for a "yes" vote over the weekend. On Wednesday it'll be LA, San Francisco on Thursday, Boston next Monday and Atlanta next Tuesday. I'll keep you up to date on what your colleagues are saying.
First, the contract.
There are a lot things I don't like about this package. It's not what we wanted when we started this effort a year ago but the reaction from individual members, in the group meetings and in the one-on-one conversations in Chicago and Dallas, was much the same as it has been almost everywhere else. Once people get away from the rhetoric and start looking at the details — and start making judgments on what this package will mean to their family, the "outrage" seems to fade.
Almost everyone starts out disappointed with the increases in health care premiums— until they find out that the employees at The New York Times had to divert a 3% wage increase in 2005 into their health care plan and that company is demanding extensive contract concessions in exchange for providing the money needed to avoid possible future diversions, or that the employees of the Washington Post are paying 20-25% of the company's cost of health care, 25% at the Baltimore Sun, 30% at the Boston Globe. Next year our share of overall health care expenses will be an estimated 10% of the total. In 2010 we'll pay an estimated average of 13%.
Wage increases?
We all wanted more money. We all deserved more money.
But when folks around the country start looking at the grim reality of the deals negotiated elsewhere, very few of your colleagues are shouting, "Hell, no."
The New York Times is looking at 2% a year wage hikes, the Washington Post settled in 2005 for a $2000 signing bonus, a nine month wage freeze and four separate increases of $10.50 @ month scattered over 27 months. The Philadelphia Inquirer took a 2 year wage freeze. The Boston Globe got a $700 lump sum bonus and will get wage increases only if the paper makes more money than it did the year before. The Baltimore Sun signed a 4 year contract with wage increases of $10 a year.
Pay cuts?
Not in this contract. Even with the increases in health care premiums, your "take home" goes up. Even if your hot button is inflation, we've got COLA protection up to a 4% rate of inflation.
And when you consider enhanced vacation time, another holiday, three more personal days, "unlimited" sick time, improvements in premium pay, better rates for shift differential and stand-by pay, enhanced benefits in case of outsourcing, new out-of-pocket limits on drug costs and managed care expenses, a boost in emergency child care payments, an increase in the minimum pay hike for those earning less than $41,600 and the removal of the "cap' that reduced pay increases for anyone making more $117,000, this is the best deal in the the news business right now.
Add to that the fact that we kept our full 401k plan and Money Retirement Plan, guaranteed schedule of severance pay, all our rights to grievance and arbitration, seniority, due process in discipline and due cause protections in dismissals.
All the talk about how we could have gotten more seems to revolve around the quarter point wage hike we didn't get. A quarter point wage increase on the average IAPE salary of $66,000 is $165. Filing for premium pay just once a year at $66,000 will get you $271.97. And someone is suggesting that you to vote "no"? Throw this package away because they think they can get another quarter point? Nonsense.
And the argument that we've sold out future employees?
People hired after ratification will not get medical or dental benefits when they retire — and will get 2% instead of 7% in their Money Purchase Plan —payments that kick-in two years after they're hired — just as this contract expires and we're negotiating a new package with Rupert Murdoch. If we could have "saved" those folks, we would have. We tried— and couldn't move the company.
The bottom line?
This isn't what we wanted.. but I, and your Board of Directors, believe we need to ratify it and start getting ready for 2010.
This is Your Union, Keep it that way. Vote 'yes.'
Steve Yount
President
IAPE CWA 1096