Agreement reached on company cell phone stipend policy

In response to a new company mobile phone stipend policy, members of the Newspaper  Guild met this week with company representatives to discuss concerns over what appeared to be company access to the personal phones of our members, up to and including the potential review and deletion of any and all data if the company felt any company email on the phone had been compromised.

Accordingly, the policy no longer contains any requirement that our members install any company app that can provide access to the phone and its contents.

Our members will be required to report to the company upon learning their phone is lost or stolen, which then affords the company the ability to act to protect that email account, most likely by changing the internal email password to prevent unauthorized access.

Due to the imminent upcoming payroll accounting software upgrade, the stipend agreement forms that some of you may have already signed that contain this now-inoperative language will be allowed to stand, although a revised agreement form reflecting this change will become available shortly. Anyone who has already signed a form can later sign and submit an updated form to Human Resources.

The requirement that workers must respond to calls from supervisors during working hours is tempered by HR acknowledgement of special circumstances (such as courthouse rules, or lack of service). However, a pattern of non-response could be raised by the company as a disciplinary item, and the Guild would be able to investigate the specifics of any such claims.