Session 24: We're Worth More

Yesterday, Dow Jones representatives  presented a counter to our wage proposal and offered 2% raises for this year and next and 2.25% in 2021, the anticipated final year of the next contract. 

While we are pleased to have gained movement on wages for the first time in a decade, we still don’t think that 2% is acceptable for our members. 

Even worse, the company continues to seek elimination of the cost of living adjustment provision of our contract. COLA comes in at 2.44% for 2019, meaning the company’s offer doesn’t keep pace with the cost of living.

We presented our initial proposal on annual raises to the company in July with the explanation that our main objective was to negotiate annual compensatory increases that aren’t negated by rising health insurance costs. The bargaining committee pushed back on the company’s request for “flexibility” to shift more of the burden to our members with no transparency on potential increases and we have achieved caps for each component of cost sharing for the term of our next contract. Keeping those caps in mind as well as the hikes our members have already borne in recent years, it is even more important for us to push for more than 2% so that the gains the committee has made this year with health care aren’t canceled out by paltry raises. 

In our view, setting our guaranteed raise higher promotes transparency and pay equity, which is especially important given the pay gaps and issues with pay practices at Dow Jones the union has identified.

The bargaining committee will be back at the table tomorrow to present our response to the company, which we will share with you on Friday. 

Starting next week, we will be having a series of meetings throughout our locations to give members a chance to hear more about our proposals from members of the bargaining committee and ask questions about negotiations. We’ll be connecting with San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and others. Stay tuned to our events page for more info.

We also ask that you keep displaying your IAPE support so that management knows that you deserve a quality contract. We’ve created a social media icon that can be used as your slack, Gmail or social media profile picture. Right click on the image here to save for upload. We ask members to change their icon to show your support and strength as we head into the home stretch.