Company, 'unwilling to pay,' cuts offer

The Hawaii Newspaper Guild

15 Jul 2008

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald again has cut its wage offer to members of the Hawaii Newspaper Guild. The company’s latest wage offer came during a day-and-a-half of negotiations between the Guild and the Company on July 2 and July 3.

The company is citing a bad economy for its unwillingness to pay a decent wage to its employees. However the Hawaii Tribune-Herald still says it is making money.

The company also is unwilling to recognize that the sliding economy affects its employees as well, and will throw its employees under the bus now to improve its own economic standing. Of course the company won’t open its books so we can see how big a profit it’s actually making, and any hard times it foresees are purely speculative.

The company is simply unwilling to award its employees more than a 1 percent annual pay raise, its most recent offer, which is down by 50 percent from the company’s offer in May. The company also promises that its wage offer will continue to go lower as long as the negotiations continue, based not on any economic factors, only on its own “willingness to pay.” In effect, members of the Guild are being punished by the company for continuing to attempt to negotiate a fair contract.

While the company remains vague about the economic factors that affect its ability to offer employees a decent pay raise, it has determined that a 1 percent pay raise in each of two years, along with a 2 percent merit pool, is all that it’s willing to offer. Keep in mind that employees have not received a negotiated pay raise since January 2002. In the meantime, the Guild has requested more information from the company about which employees would be eligible for the merit pay.

As with wages, the company also is unwilling to offer employees a decent reimbursement for the use of their automobiles. The Guild agreed to give up the $39 weekly guarantee in the current contract (the few employees receiving the guarantee now who no longer drive would continue to receive it) in return for a reimbursement rate consistent with IRS rate, which factors in the current cost of fuel and other costs of operating a vehicle. The current IRS rate is 58.5 cents per mile.

On the company’s proposed sliding scale of reimbursement tied to an average price of gasoline, employees who drive their own cars would only get 48 cents per mile if the price of gas goes as high as $5.50 a gallon. At the current price of gasoline, the company’s proposed reimbursement rate would be only 43 cents per mile.

But the company rejected the Guild’s auto reimbursement proposal. Instead, reimbursement rates being offered by the company “represent numbers we’re willing to reimburse, not based on any factors,” said L. Michael Zinser, the Tennessee attorney negotiating for the company.

Other proposals and counter-proposals were exchanged and discussed regarding grievance procedures but no agreements between the Guild and the company were reached during the July 2-3 bargaining session.

Bargaining is expected to continue Aug. 20-21 in Hilo.