Well, this week we finally got to see the new, consolidated MediaNews benefits package for 2008 - and most folks aren't very pleased. This is yet another item we’d have tried to bargain over had the company not illegally withdrawn recognition of our bargaining unit this summer.
It's not just that premiums are up. Though the increases are significant for many of us, we all know this is a national trend.
I've heard more concern about the way the news was delivered, and that it's a unilateral decision in which we had no voice.
Though not all rosy, at papers where there are Guild units and contracts, results have been different (check back soon for a summary). At the Chronicle, the Guild even administers the health care program!
What are your top concerns around the health care situation?
Let’s have a blog dialogue in the comments section...
Friday, November 9, 2007
So, about that health care program...
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4 comments:
At the Chronicle, where I work, our Guild administers the health care plan through a joint trust, financed by employer contributions which we negotiate. We also negotiate wages and pension contributions. It's up to us to steer money from one category into another. So, in recent years, we've elected to keep health costs down by diverting raises into the health fund, while at the same time our health plan administrators have been pushing the HMOs for better deals and juggling benefit design options.
There's a different system at the Merc, where the Guild has premium caps in the current contract, and higher salary minimums. It's different still at the St. Paul Pioneer Press where the union negotiated substantial improvements in the cookie-cutter national self-insurance plan MediaNews is implementing.
So whats the deal gonna be at the BANG-EB? Right now it's the company's call -- they felt no need to negotiate with employees over the plan being implemented this month.
But ultimately it's up to you if this continues. With a Guild you can decide your priorities, and seek to achieve them through negotiations. Obviously the company has priorities, too, and everybody has to take the state of the economy and health care system into account.
But is take-it-or-leave-it the final word? Dont you deserve a say as much as we do at the Chronicle, or at the Mercury News, or in the Twin Cities?
Your call... But you can count on this: We Guild members at the Chron and at the Merc and across the country will help our BANG-
EB colleagues NO MATTER WHAT.
In Solidarity,
Carl Hall
I sent this comment to Michael C. prexy of the SF news guild
*****
Hey Mike. I saw your blog wherein you extolled the virtues of the media guild.
Here are a few things that trouble me about this whole thing:
1. When the SF Guild capitulated to Frank Vega -- and capitulate is the right word -- it looks like you folks cleverly set up the non-editorial members of the Guild to be the fall guys and gals.
At that time, this is what you confirmed to me, for an item I was working on about the situation: The editorial members, at the time of that contract a few years ago, comprised the majority of the voting members.
And it was also interesting that the only job cuts, salary cuts, fell on non-editorial members. In fact, didn't the editorial members of the Guild get a small pay increase and avoid layoffs at the time?
Of course what you didn't say was that this was a carefully planned strategy by the Guild to cooperate with Mr. Vega to divide and conquer. Vega and the SF Guild knew that management could wring a majority vote out of the Guild if SFC execs spared editorial and let the meat ax fall disproportionately on the non-editorial work units.
Don't bother denying this. I've got friends who work at the SFC who can verify this theory. Even worse for you, it fits all of the available facts.
2. Why is it that the Guild was unable to get a pay raise for 3-4 years for the newspaper employees in Alameda County?
I've asked this question of a number of guild officials and allies. I haven't heard an answer yet, or at least something that would be considered an actual answer by a real journalist. Maybe you can do better.
And if you think I wrote this solely for your personal edification, Mike, feel free to believe that. This won't be the only place where I post this theory.
Now, if you want to set me straight, I'm sure you'll figure out how to get ahold of me.
As always, I have an open, inquiring -- and skeptical mind. It comes with our territory.
At face value, you've got a lot of explaining to do as you attempt to organize East Bay newspaper workers.
*****
Whoa! Whoever this "George" is clearly has need for some truth serum. I cant find a single factual statement in his rant! I dont try to reason with fibbing children, but if anybody seriously wants to check the facts about the Chronicle contract, he or she is welcome to call me anytime, and I was a member of the negotiating committee. Carl Hall, 415-421-6833
Dear Media Guild
You ripped a poster who thought the union agreed to a contract that shielded you -- a news reporter -- and other journalists -- like Michael Cabanatuan -- from the brunt of the wage cuts, benefit cuts and other compensation compensation. But I stumbled across some evidence that suggests that is in fact what happened.
From the Associated Press in July 2005:
*****
A pay freeze that has been in place since the beginning of the year will end in January for journalists and outside salespersons. But roughly 40 percent of Guild members at the paper will see immediate pay cuts, Cabanatuan said.
*****
Unless Michael Cabanatuan was accidentally or deliberately inaccurate, here's how a logical person would read this:
If "all journalists" and "outside sales people" enjoyed the benefits of an end to a pay freeze in January, that "40 percent" who saw "immediate pay cuts" must have come from NON JOURNALISTS.
You like to call people liars and children, apparently, who disagree with you.
But perhaps in this open forum -- which you union folks set up -- maybe you can explain how it was that journalists and sales persons had their pay freezes lifted within months of the ratification of this contract. Yet at the same time, 40 percent had to suffer immediate pay cuts.
If journalists would have their pay freezes lifted within five months, who were the 40 percent who had to suffer "immediate" reductions in their wages.
I'm also curious about the following: What about the three or four years when you defenders of the working class FAILED to get any pay raises at the Alameda County papers?
Wasn't the Guild responsible for that, as much as management?
Why was the Guild so ineffective in getting pay raises? Why is the Guild so great for the news industry in the Bay Area when it looks like Frank Vega, and then Dean Singleton, mopped the floor with you union leaders on both sides of the Bay?
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