Wage cut vote set for April 23

For the first time in the Milwaukee Newspaper Guild’s history, members will vote on whether to cut their own wages, in exchange for limited protection against layoffs.

The plan comes to the membership with no recommendation from either the local's Bargaining Committee or our Executive Board, after two days of very difficult negotiations. If the membership votes the plan down in balloting next week, Journal Sentinel Inc. negotiators say the company will proceed immediately with involuntary job cuts.

Terms of the package are as follows:

• Effective May 3, wages for all members of our bargaining unit will be reduced by approximately 6.6%.
• The wage cuts will expire May 2, 2010, or when the non-represented Journal Sentinel staff’s 6% wage cuts expire, whichever is later. If the company partially restores wages for non-represented staff, it will do the same for us.
• All full-time employees will receive 10 personal days in 2009, on the same terms as the non-represented staff. Part-time employees will receive a proportional number of personal days. In 2010, we would receive the same number of personal days as the non-represented staff, if any.
• The company will not lay off any members of our bargaining unit through Sept. 30 of this year.
• These wage cuts will not apply to anyone who took the recent buyout.

The talks earlier this week followed the buyout, which attracted only nine employees, almost all from the copy desk, graphics/design and editorial assistant ranks. Guild negotiators had warned that the buyout terms were not generous enough to draw the numbers needed to meet the company's $1.2 million newsroom payroll reduction target and avoid layoffs. The combined wages of the departing staffers totaled $436,800, leaving us $763,200 short.

Management representatives then rejected a Guild proposal to close the gap through unpaid furloughs. They also refused to accept a 6% wage cut, because it would have left us about $73,000 short of their target. They refused to agree to a definitive date to end the cuts. They refused to extend the no-layoff guarantee to the end of this year. They refused to guarantee that we would get any personal days in 2010. And they refused to even discuss structuring the wage cut in some way that would ease the burden on the lowest-paid members of the staff.

Guild negotiators briefed members on the package at a membership meeting Wednesday. Voting will be scheduled 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 5-7 p.m. next Thursday, April 23. Details of the balloting and absentee-ballot procedures will be distributed to members.