Guild Leaders Not Involved In Judy Miller Exit Negotiations

By: Joe Strupp As reports surface of severance negotiations between embattled reporter Judith Miller and her bosses at The New York Times, leaders of the Newspaper Guild say they have not been party to any talks, but would have to be before any deal is struck.

"If it ever comes to the point where anything specific is talked about, we have to be involved," said Barry Lipton, president of the New York Newspaper Guild, which represents Times editorial employees. "We are the legal bargaining unit."

He added that the only way the Times could fire her without severance is if it could prove she acted with "gross negligence of duty or involving acts of dishonesty. He said such situations are not common and can be appealed through arbitration.

Several publications this week, including The Wall Street Journal, have reported that Miller is in talks with management over a severance agreement. The New York Observer contends that the discussions surround how much severance Miller will receive, what space, if any, she may get in the paper to write a response to critics, and if her departure will be the subject of a joint announcement with the paper.

Times officials were not immediately available for comment.

Lipton said the guild contract requires that any such agreement on an employee departure or severance involve union officials in the planning before it is finalized. "If there is any kind of formal agreement for any kind of severance, we must be involved in the negotiations," he said. "If and when this comes to that point, we will be involved."

He said the guild contract requires that any employee who is fired receive two weeks of his or her average salary for each year of service. With 28 years at the Times, Miller would apparently take away 56 weeks of pay under that provision. If she were to quit on her own without an agreement reached, she would not have to be paid anything, Lipton said.

Lena Williams, the former unit chair at the Times who departed just weeks ago after taking a buyout, said the guild had taken three fired employees to arbitration in the past two years and won a severance package for each. She mentioned one employee since 2000 who had sought an arbitration award after being fired, but was not successful. None of those employees were editorial staffers.

Currently, two editorial employees who were fired, photographer Nancy Siesel and reporter Susan Sachs, are in arbitration seeking severance, Williams said. Sachs, the former Baghdad bureau chief, was fired after allegedly telling the wives of two Baghdad correspondents that they were having affairs. She denies wrongdoing.

Siesel, a Pulitzer Prize winner, lost her job for what her termination letter described as "repeated failure to comply with warnings and directives concerning [her] job performance," according to the guild Web site.

If Miller is negotiating a package with Times officials, she is not likely to get fired or quit outright. The question about what her severance will include, however, remains unanswered.

If talks fall apart, there is always the chance that the paper may seek to dismiss her, with or without the union-protected severance. If managers believe they can successfully claim that she acted dishonestly or was grossly negligent, they may seek to fire her out right.

Williams said the paper would have to prove that she acted in an unlawful way that reaches to the heights of a fireable offense. Williams did not know if Miller's past mistakes in WMD reporting, or her recent reluctance to cooperate with reporters on the Oct. 16 story about her involvement in the Plame case, would provide that kind of evidence.

"What could they fire her for? She did what?" Williams said. "Bill Keller thinks she misled, but misled in what? I don't know that much about it."

Would Miller's 85 days in jail draw any sympathy from an arbitrator? "Probably not," Williams said. "They look at what the person did, if it amounts to gross neglect." Lipton declined to comment on any specific scenarios for Miller's departure.