Both parties agreed Tuesday to allow members to see for the first time what was proposed behind closed doors as the parties tried to settle the contract. This information is being released for communication purposes only and cannot be used by either party in any legal proceeding.

We’re grateful to Publisher George Hearst for agreeing to let you see what the two parties have proposed, and we hope sharing this information will help you see that the Guild has been striving to compromise while protecting our members’ interests.

Here’s how the two proposals break down on the major issues that have been making reaching a settlement difficult.

LAYOFF LANGUAGE

WHAT THE GUILD WANTED: To keep our original language, which required layoffs to be by reverse order of seniority by department.

WHAT THE COMPANY WANTED: To eliminate the union’s right to bargain over layoffs, making everyone vulnerable to a potential layoff no matter how long their service.

WHERE THE GUILD WAS WILLING TO MOVE: The company could use up to 20 “skips” whereby they exempt selected individuals from out of seniority layoffs. We stated that number was meant to be a starting point for a conversation.

WHERE THE COMPANY MOVED: It would bargain over layoffs only after 90 people had been let go over the two-year life of the contract. The company has not laid off that many people in a century. It would wipe out 40 percent of the workforce. This is a move on paper only.

OUTSOURCING

WHAT THE GUILD WANTED: To keep the protections we had that barred the company from outsourcing work if it would displace a staff position.

WHAT THE COMPANY WANTED: To eliminate the union’s right to bargain over outsourcing.

WHERE THE GUILD WAS WILLING TO MOVE: The Guild was willing to accept the language the company imposed in 2009, which requires bargaining over outsourcing but does not ban it.

WHERE THE COMPANY MOVED: The company would negotiate over outsourcing only after 90 jobs were outsourced. Again, this is a move on paper only.

The last written proposal both parties shared was in April 2011. The company declined to meet again for a bargaining session until November. At that session, the union had prepared and offered to make a new comprehensive settlement proposal but the company said it would only listen to a proposal on settling the NLRB case.

Our summary above includes what was verbally said by the Guild to the company about its willingness to move. Our written April proposal called for a $750 bonus on signing and a 2 percent raise on the first anniversary of ratification, which would have been this spring. The company proposed a $1,500 signing bonus with no raise. We proposed the laid-off workers get $50,000 each; the company offered $1,500.

You can read the company’s April 2009 proposal here.

You can read the Guild’s April 2009 proposal here.

The Times Union proposed a settlement offer on the National Labor Relations Board case on the record Friday that would pay pennies to the dollar on what is owed. It also would leave our members without a contract and with significantly less leverage to get one.

The Times Union wants to pay the illegally fired workers $15,000 each and give all our members $1,000. The 11 people laid off illegally in 2009 are owed more than $600,000, the National Labor Relations Board has said. Individual members are owed as much as $109,000.

The company is offering the workers 19 cents on the dollar for a case it lost. This is like a criminal being found guilty in court, losing his appeal and then announcing it’s time to plea bargain for a much shorter sentence.

The proposal would include no recurring raise and would strengthen the company’s hand in demanding members surrender their right to bargain over layoffs and outsourcing.

The company wants Guild members to “share” the cost of its illegal actions. In fact, the Guild told the company immediately in 2009 that the layoffs were illegal even as they were occurring and told the publisher to stop. Instead, the Times Union wasted tens of thousands of dollars on a losing legal appeal.

The money owed to our laid-off colleagues is solely the responsibility of Times Union management and the Hearst Corp.

Offering our members a $1,000 “bribe” to sell out laid-off colleagues is something we cannot accept.

The Guild has repeatedly offered compromises on both layoffs and outsourcing as well as in the NLRB case. Given the company’s decision to make this settlement offer public, the union plans to ask the company’s permission to divulge our off-the-record proposals and theirs for communication purposes only. We think you deserve to see the compromises we offered and what the company offered in return.

You deserve the full story.

A membership meeting will be held at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 18, at the Colonie public library to elect a new treasurer. The person elected will serve the remainder of Dan Roesser’s term, which runs until Jan. 1, 2014.

As many know, Dan was laid off by the Times Union in December 2010. Under the International’s bylaws, he was able to remain in office for a year and has continued to do excellent work for the local and its members. We are deeply grateful to Dan for his services. The importance of his work in these tough times cannot be underestimated. We are very appreciative of the fact that Dan is willing to continue to work with us and help train his successor as treasurer.

The position requires someone who can keep our books, write checks, keep tracks of our accounts and prepare materials for our annual independent audit. (Our audit was just completed, so this won’t have to be done again until late 2012.)

The treasurer also serves as a member of the Guild’s Executive Board. The board meets the second Thursday of each month except July and August, at the Guild’s office in the Albany Labor Temple. Special meetings are sometimes called, but infrequently. There are also membership meetings, including one required each fall, which the Executive Board is expected to attend. The treasurer must give a monthly update on finances at each monthly board meeting, as well as a report at general membership meetings.

Among an Executive Board member’s duties are: overseeing the spending of dues money; deciding what grievances should be filed; and setting and implementing policy for the local.

Nominations for the office can be made in two ways. A nomination can be made and seconded from the floor during the meeting, or a nomination petition bearing the signatures of five (5) percent of the membership in good standing can be presented to the local secretary at the meeting. The minimum number of signatures required on a petition is 10.

In the event of a contested election, a mail ballot will be conducted. A Local Election Committee will be selected and approved by the membership after nominations have been made in accordance with the local’s bylaws. The committee will supervise the mailing and counting of ballots.

Please come to this very important meeting.

When you work on a holiday, you have three options: 1) Be paid 2½ days’ pay; 2) be paid 1 day’s pay and get 1½ days’ makeup time to use later; or 3) take 1½ days’ pay and get 1 day’s makeup time to use later. It is your choice what to take. Just note what you want to do on the bottom of your timeslip.

When a holiday falls on a weekend, as Christmas and New Year’s Day do this year, that day is the holiday. People who work will get holiday pay. People who are off will get a makeup day. You can choose to take it on the day before or after, but the TU will remain open those days.

An employee may substitute Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve as an optional day off. Employees who work either the eve of the holiday or the holiday or both shall be paid one shift at the holiday rate. Holiday pay rates apply when the shift starts on the holiday, not the eve.

Part-time employees who work more than 28½ hours a week get pro-rated holiday pay.

Employees cannot be required to work more than three holidays a year. Those who choose to do so get a day’s pay or makeup day in addition to normal holiday pay. (The company can give first preference, however, to those who have worked fewer than three holidays.)

Over the years, the holiday-pay language has been added to and amended. The language on holidays falling on weekends was bargained in the 2000 contract, the same year Martin Luther King Jr. Day was added as a floating holiday. In our last talks, we bargained a benefit that allows colleagues to substitute a different religious holiday for Christmas, addressing an issue raised by Jewish and Muslim coworkers. The language is in section 27 of the contract, pages 56-57. Yes, that language, like most of the contract, remains in effect.

If there is a benefit you want explained, email us at office@albanyguild.org.

Guild Executive Board member Tim Neff is among the current honorees for the Publisher’s Quarterly Award for Excellence.

It is no surprise to his colleagues that Tim does great work, and we are grateful the Times Union recognized him. It just shows that you can take great pride in your work and be active in the union.

Here’s what the company said about Tim:

“During a dramatic downsizing of our staff, Tim has gone above and beyond to make sure that timesunion.com not only succeeds but stands out among all Hearst news sites. During the past few months, our site has seen phenomenal growth, and much of that is due directly to Tim’s efforts.”

Associate editor Mike Spain, one of the newsroom’s top managers, said: “Tim’s knowledge and experience in our newsroom operation combined with his skills in the digital platform have made him one of our biggest assets. The evidence of this is our continued climb in online audience.”

Go Team leader Mike Goodwin, another newsroom manager, said this about Tim: “To understand Tim Neff’s impact on the website, you need to simply look at the traffic numbers from a recent week he was on vacation. Traffic was down on several days. Tim is always easy to work with and suggests plenty of ideas for the Go Team and the newsroom. But he also creates plenty of content on his own, photo galleries and such, that help fatten the numbers.”

As the company wrote: The negative impact when Tim is away was echoed by city editor Teresa Buckley: “I’ve never heard so many people ask when someone is returning from vacation as when Tim took time off over the summer. There is a different air when he is around. It’s not so much his outward energy, but the knowledge that he’s cooking up ways to drive traffic, creating galleries or enhancing packages, and asking the newsroom to put together the key elements that bring in readers.”

Tim works in an area that has seen a sharp reduction in staff, from nine full-time employees to four.

Hearst executives Steve Swartz, Mark Aldam and Lincoln Millstein have praised the website’s outstanding performance, the company said.
Editor Rex Smith, the newsroom’s top manager, said in the company bulletin: “Tim is the very model of a journalist who has adapted to our changing professional environment. What’s admirable is that as he has shifted from a print-based job to a digital role, with all the learning about technology and new modes of content presentation that such a change requires, he has not wavered a bit in his devotion to high standards. He’s a thoughtful journalist and a valued colleague.”

Tim joined the Executive Board this year after his colleague Mark Ramirez left for a job in New Jersey. We’re proud of the work Tim does with the Guild, and we’re especially proud to see his hard work at the Times Union recognized.