The vacation canvassers

Even before the contract is signed, Guild representatives are fanning out across the newsroom to ensure that one of the pact's newest provisions will be properly administered.

Stewards and steward leaders are verifying vacation totals for everyone hired from 1995 to now. The union needs this information to check whether the company is depositing the correct amount of vacation in "transitional vacation accounts" that are being set up for all of the less-senior staffers.

Starting Jan. 1, the new contract changes the way vacations are earned by this group of workers. Until now, all of us have earned our vacations the year before we took them. Anyone hired before 1995 remains on that system, but everyone hired afterward (in practice, everyone hired since the Journal and Sentinel merged) moves onto a new system of earning vacation the same year they take it.

Obviously, a year's worth of vacation would have fallen through the cracks if people just moved straight from one system to the other. To prevent that from happening, the contract sets up the special accounts, or TVAs, with the same amount of vacation that each employee will have for 2006, be it two, three or four weeks. Workers can then take up to one week per year of that extra vacation between now and 2011.

Please cooperate with the Guild representatives who are making sure you get the time off that you deserve.