Newspaper Guild ratifies New York Times pact p. 13

By: George Garneau

THE NEW YORK Times' Newspaper Guild members overwhelmingly ratified a seven-year contract containing concessions on job security.
After a year without a contract due to disagreements over security provisions, the Guild local, the paper's largest union, representing 1,600 journalists and commercial employees, voted 577 to 86 for the pact.
"Our members clearly saw this as a very good settlement, particularly given the tough economic conditions that prevail in our industry," Barry Lipton, president of the Newspaper Guild of New York, said in a statement. The contract "preserves meaningful job security and provides increased wages and benefits and other improvements," he said.
The vote completes a series of contracts, all with no-strike clauses, with the paper's 12 unions.
Retroactive to 1993, the Guild pact includes annual raises of 3.5%, 3.2% and 3.1%, with wages for 1996 and onward to be negotiated, or arbitrated in the event of deadlock.
Raises bring top minimum scale for a reporter to $1,285 in 1995, from $1,166 under the old pact.
The major obstacle to a contract was management demands to gut job security. The pact preserves many security provisions, but the union made concessions, most of which affect future workers.
They include reclassifying some categories of work to lower wage groups, the right to pass over "outstanding" employees when making layoffs by seniority, reduced seniority rights for workers hired after 1994, raising by 60% to 16 years the length of employment before reaching maximum job protection, lower wages for new hires in some categories, lower base pay for some sales staff, longer probation periods.
Union gains include buyout packages, health insurance for domestic partners, added contributions to the union benefits fund, "reasonable and appropriate" breaks for people working computer terminals, and the company agreed to match employees' retirement contributions up to 6% of pay.