|
Second quarter brings weekend changes; company changes late-night schedule
How much was your 2005 merit bonus?
More equity awards go to unit members; newsroom’s old and young left behind
Family and Medical Leave Act update
Second quarter brings weekend changes;
company changes late-night schedule
Nearly three months after two part-time police reporters were cut from the Journal
Sentinel staff, the remaining local news reporters continue to feel the impact
of their absence.
In the first quarter, management tried to fill the vacant weekend shifts by expanding
the weekend rotation. Most reporters were working three or four weekend shifts
in the quarter, which complicated weekday staffing.
For the second quarter, management has moved two full-time reporters to Tuesday-through-Saturday
schedules and moved a third back to his previous Sunday-through-Thursday schedule,
allowing other reporters to go back to working just two or three weekend shifts
per quarter.
One bright spot for those working more weekends: A little more money. The contract
guarantees a weekend differential of 75 cents an hour, which comes to $6 for each
weekend shift (or $300 a year if you work every weekend and have just two weeks
of vacation). That rises to 80 cents an hour, or $6.40 a shift, next year, and
85 cents an hour, or $6.80 a shift, in 2008.
And perhaps it's just a coincidence, but just one day after a previous newsletter
reminded Guild bargaining-unit members how much turnaround pay they could earn
from working weekend late-night police shifts, management changed the hours of
those shifts.
Our contract requires overtime pay whenever the regularly scheduled end of one
shift and the start of the next shift are less than 10 hours apart (or, if a day
off intervenes, 34 hours). After the dismissal of the two weekend night police
reporters, in what management called an economic downsizing, the Guild pointed
out that other local news reporters who rotate through the 4:30 p.m.-to-1:30 a.m.
Saturday and Sunday shifts would be eligible for overtime if they were required
to start any earlier than 11:30 a.m. the next Monday. (For example, starting at
9 a.m. Monday would result in 2.5 hours of OT.)
Right after that, newsroom managers realized it no longer made sense to keep people
around until 1:30 a.m., based on how late we can get stories into the paper. They
changed the shift to a 3:30 p.m.-to-12:30 a.m. schedule.
For those reporters still working the Saturday night police shift (or filling
in when the Sunday night police reporter is off), the earliest they can come in
without being paid for a short turnaround is 10:30 a.m. on Monday. As our earlier
story noted, some editors may be more willing to work out arrangements for reporters
to come in late than to pay overtime -- and working out a deal to come in at 10:30
is likely to be easier to arranging to come in at 11:30.
How much was your 2005 merit bonus?
Journal Sentinel management has started telling Guild bargaining-unit members
what our lump-sum bonuses will be, and they are expected to show up on our March
30 paychecks. So this is a good time to review how those bonuses were calculated.
At management's insistence, our new contract calls for those bonuses instead
of the discretionary ("merit") raises we would have received in 2005.
We'll go back to the regular system of raises to our base wages for discretionary
pay this year and the next two years. Also at management's insistence, the discretionary
pool has been cut from 1.5% to 1%, and that's not changing during the life of
this contract.
Each full-time employee should receive a sheet that shows the bonus as a percentage
of weekly pay, multiplied by 52 weeks. (The calculation is a bit more convoluted
for part-timers, but it still comes out the same.) The idea is that the bonus
therefore comes out to the same amount that a similarly sized merit raise would
produce in the course of one year, with the obvious difference that a raise
keeps giving you the same amount in future years.
In the past, when the pool was 1.5%, a lot more people received merit raises
that were below 1.5% than above it, and as a result, the median -- the point
that half of us are above and half of us are below -- was actually less than
1.5%, but a few really big raises pulled the average up to the contractually
required 1.5%.
That could happen again, although early indications suggest that most of these
bonuses are concentrated in a narrow range of about 0.2 percentage points above
or below 1%. As with a regular merit raise, each of us should have a conversation
with our supervisor to determine what message management is sending about our
performance through this particular bonus, if the supervisor has not made that
clear.
One other point about wages: We have discovered a couple of errors in back pay
for the 2005 across-the-board raises. With few exceptions, everyone should have
received a full year's worth of a 1.5% across-the-board raise on the Jan. 19
paycheck.
Some people received more because of changes in minimum wage scales or because
they moved up a step on the scale.
Please check to make sure you received the right amount, and please contact
a Guild representative right away if you find anything wrong.
More equity awards go to unit members; newsroom’s
old and young left behind
After concerns were raised by some members about how the so-called performance
equity awards were distributed in 2005, the company appears to have widened
its pool to benefit a larger range of the newsroom staff with its recent awards.
Some facts about the recently announced awards:
- Twenty-six of the 35 newsroom recipients were in positions that are
represented by the Guild. In addition, Journal Interactive had one award recipient
in a guild-represented position. That means 75% of this year's newsroom
award recipients were in the bargaining unit, and it's a big change from
last year, when only 19 of 37 (51%) of newsroom recipients were in the unit.
- A closer look shows the biggest shift was in the editing ranks: The
number of assistant managing editors and senior editors winning awards plunged
from 11 to two, while the number of awards given to bargaining-unit assistant
editors and coordinators jumped from two to seven.
- White males and minorities were slightly over-represented when compared
to their proportions in the newsroom, while white females were under-represented
among the award recipients. The racial and gender breakdown didn't change
much from last year.
- Workers under 30 were under-represented, while those over 40 received
awards roughly proportionate to their makeup in the newsroom.
- Workers in their 30s were by far the most over-represented group receiving
the equity awards. They make up less than 20% of the newsroom, but received
31% of the awards.
- None of the awards was given to a newsroom employee in a non-journalist
classification, even though such employees make up more than 11% of the newsroom.
In addition, none of the awards was given to a part-time employee. Last year,
the only non-journalist to win an award was a manager. No part-timers won awards
last year, either, and in fact the award rules specifically exclude part-timers,
despite this group's significant contributions to our newspaper.
The Guild plans to continue to study the equity awards as part of its monitoring
of merit pay in the newsroom.
Family and Medical Leave Act update
The company is reviewing its Family and Medical Leave Act form.
A newsroom employee recently was given a copy of the form, and the Guild sent
it to our lawyer, Barbara Zack Quindel, for review. She raised some issues with
the form related to consent and release of medical records.
We have asked the company to review the form, which it is doing.
In the meantime, if you receive or need a Family and Medical Leave Act form,
please talk to Greg Pearson or any other Guild representative before signing
the form.
|
