Reporters and other Guild employees at the St. Paul Pioneer Press got their first look at the totality of the plan owner Dean Singleton and his privately-held MediaNews group has in store for their next contract. That assumes of course you can call what Singleton wants from the Pioneer Press a “contract.”
By the time you scan down a long, Draconian list of demands, cuts, concessions and give-backs MediaNews’ “proposals” walk and talk more like disincentives than reasons to stay with the paper.
If you think I’m being alarmist, here is an overview of MediaNews’ proposal:
* Eliminate HealthPartners as a choice for health insurance coverage. All employees would be offered the same plan, which could be changed without negotiation with the Guild. (Under the current contract, employees who choose HealthPartners accept higher monthly premiums, while the company’s contribution to the premium is capped.)
* Reduce the amount of sick time and short- and long-term disability leave available to employees by eliminating the current Guild policy. The company did not immediately give details of the policy that would replace the Guild policy, other than to say it is the same as what is offered to non-union workers. These policies affect both people who have unexpected, serious illnesses and women who go on leave following childbirth.
* Eliminate the right to daily overtime. Overtime would only be paid only to employees who work more than 40 hours in one week.
* Eliminate “call-back” overtime, now available to employees called in to work for more than two hours on what had been a scheduled day off. The company wants to pay those employees only straight time.
* Freeze future accrual of pension benefits.
* Eliminate current vacation policy and replace with “earn-as-you-go” accrual. Under the current accrual policy: Employees in 2007 are earning vacation to be taken in 2008. This 2008 vacation time is yours; if you leave the company before the end of 2007, the company will pay you your accrued 2008 vacation along with any unused 2007 vacation. Under the company’s proposal: Employees would be earning 2007 vacation time in 2007; if you left before the end of the year, the difference between the amount of time taken and earned in a given year would be paid in — or, presumably, taken from — the employee’s last paycheck. Total accrued vacation is considered an accounting liability for the company; eliminating the policy results in a one-time savings.
* Allow for-cause drug testing.
* Allow sales representatives to be disciplined for not meeting sales goals.
* Eliminate the evergreen clause and add a clause that would give the company broad “management-rights” authority to set and change schedules, rules and assignments, without Guild involvement.
* Eliminate the restriction that prevents the company from making ownership of a car a condition of employment.
* Eliminate newsroom team leaders from Guild coverage.
* Exclude from union membership people who work for online and niche publications.
* Remove required preference for internal applicants when hiring.
* Remove the right of a Guild member to return to a previous position after being promoted to a job for which they are later deemed unqualified.
* Remove restrictions prohibiting the company from making a full-time position a part-time position without Guild agreement.
* Reduce the minimum level of required Guild membership in editorial and advertising departments.
* Eliminate provisions for minimum sales commissions and specified benefits for advertising staff.
* Reduce severance from 38 to 12 weeks and pay only to laid-off employees.
* Create a two-tier wage scale, under which new hires would reach top minimum pay after three years of service, not six. (Specific wages not yet offered.)
* Reduce mileage reimbursement to 35 cents per mile, from the IRS-determined level, now 48.5 cents per mile.
* Eliminate provision that prohibits reporters and photographers from being required to do each other’s work.
* Allow factors other than seniority to be taken into account when making layoffs.
* Eliminate restrictions on hiring freelancers and stringers.
* Eliminate health-care eligibility for future retirees.
PiPress Guild officer Jack Sullivan tried to maintain a civil tone as he reacted to the gantlet of hits. Still, he described it as, “The most thorough assault on everything that is good about working at the Pioneer Press.”
He added that if it is enacted as MediaNews would like, “It would offer no reason for experienced reporters to stay and no incentive to come here is you’re a talented younger reporter.”
Sullivan says, “I had 10 years experience before I came here, [the last year and a half in DC with the AP], and I can tell you I wouldn’t have done it if this was contract in place.”
Those of you sympathetic to management’s view that the bottom has already fallen out of the newspaper business and the best anyone can hope for now is a salvage operation run with skeleton staffs and minimal resources, will read Sullivan and dismiss his view as negotiating hyperbole. But it is my view — consider the source here — that Sullivan is being more rational than histrionic.
All the catty jabs thrown at reporters withstanding, about how lazy they are and what a cushy deal they’ve had with all their union protections and benefits, the fact is most of them are brighter-than-average white collar workers with sufficient talents to do reasonably well in PR, shilling for frozen burritos, miracle beauty aids, investment firms and generally adding to the giant megaphone of quasi-to-non-factual communications clogging our cultural atmosphere.
Overall effect: Fewer facts. More spin.
A “deal” like what MediaNews is “proposing” presents adults working for newspapers, people with children, mortgages and college tuition bills a stark choice. Be responsible to your family, accept that reporting is no longer a full-salaried adult job and leave, or stay, out of fear or selfishness and continue to watch your standard of living backslide further and faster.
Recent J-school grads (and less) may still take the remaining jobs. But under conditions such as Singleton is offering, the likelihood of many of them staying for 20 or 30 years and becoming deeply-versed in the history and folkways of the city and their beat grows ever less likely.
The antennae of several PiPressers went up at the line demanding reduction of standard (maximum) severance packages from 38 to 12 weeks, and with that new minimal maximum applying only to those being laid-off. Is this Singleton’s preparation for closing down the PiPress? Or maybe the oft-discussed merger with the Star Tribune? Either way it would save Singleton a fast $30,000-$40,000 per discarded employee.
Assuming that a merger is at least a couple years off, I’ve become intrigued with the maneuvering of both Singleton and Avista to use more and more freelancers to cover beats formerly assigned to full-time employees. Sullivan used the theoretical example of the paper shelling out $200 to a Baltimore-area freelancer to cover a Twins road game rather than send a sports reporter out on a week-long road trip. Other reporters see the freelance option having more immediate impact on arts and entertainment sections, where local freelance writers could — the argument goes — provide a reasonable facsimile of full-time coverage at a fraction of the cost, and of course with none of that pesky union interference.
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