Company stonewalls Guild proposals

The Hawaii Newspaper Guild

29 Sep 2008

Hawaii Newspaper Guild

Hawaii Tribune-Herald negotiator L. Michael Zinser on Thursday rejected a Guild proposal that would have met one of the company’s goals and saved the company thousands of dollars a year.

During two days of bargaining over a new contract this week, the Guild negotiating team proposed to eliminate the current automobile mileage guarantee of $39 a week in return for an increase in the mileage reimbursement rate from 27.5 cents a mile to whatever the IRS has determined is the minimum cost of operating a vehicle. The IRS rate is currently 58.5 cents a mile.

Under the current contract, employees who are required to use their own vehicle on the job may elect to take the minimum amount of $39 dollars or a reimbursement of their actual mileage, whichever is greater. Under the Guild’s proposal, the minimum would be eliminated and employees using their own vehicles would be reimbursed at the IRS rate for every mile they drive.

Four employees currently receiving the minimum weekly who are not required to drive would continue to receive the $39 weekly minimum under the Guild’s proposal.

Yet even though the Guild’s proposal meets the company’s goal of eliminating the minimum payment for most employees, and saves the company thousands of dollars, that wasn’t good enough for the company’s negotiating team of Zinser and Circulation Department supervisor William Crawford.

The company wants not only to eliminate the minimum, but to base the reimbursement rate solely on a complicated survey of local gasoline prices that the company would calculate on a weekly basis. If in effect now that would be about 43 cents per mile, representing only the price of gasoline and none of the associated costs of operating a vehicle such as maintenance, wear and tear, licensing, registration and insurance.

This effort by the Guild to reach out to the company for even one tentative agreement was rejected without consideration by Zinser.

The Guild also proposed a wage increase that would start with a 4.5 percent effective retroactively to Jan. 1, 2005, a 3.5 increase effective Jan. 1, 2006, and subsequent raises of 3 percent each year through 2010. These percentages are lower than what the Guild has previously proposed.

The company called the Guild’s proposal “irresponsible.”

The company’s latest wage offer is a 1 percent increase each year of a two-year contract – no retroactivity -- with a 2 percent “merit pool” that employees would receive at the company’s discretion. Advertising and classified sales reps and clerks would be on commission only and not be eligible for the merit pool pay, nor would they be eligible for overtime pay. In addition, employees not at the top of their pay scale would also not be eligible for the merit pool. And once they reach the top of the pay scale, the employee would not become eligible for the merit pool pay until 12 months later.

The company would have to distribute the entire merit pool under its proposal, but not everyone eligible is guaranteed to receive any of it. According to the way the company has written its proposal, the entire amount could be given to one employee if the company wishes.

The company has not indicated that it is losing money or that it is in any trouble financially. Zinser has stated a number of times that the company’s low wage offer is not due to the inability to pay, it is only the result of the company’s unwillingness to pay. While the company continues to trumpet the poor economic climate for its miserly offer, the company’s negotiating team refuses to offer any economic evidence that the newspaper is suffering as a result of the economy.

Zinser tried to use the Honolulu Advertiser as an example of low wage offers in the newspaper industry but he was unaware of the whole story. Advertiser management is proposing a zero percent pay raise for its employees, but Zinser didn’t know that the Advertiser had also declared it is losing money and has agreed to open up its books to a Guild auditor for verification.

That’s not the case in Hilo, where the Guild believes the Stephens Media-owned Hawaii Tribune-Herald hides its books to conceal its healthy profits.

The company made no proposals during the two days of talks. The company only announced that its positions on the Seniority, Part-time, Casual and Temporary Employees, and Employee Data sections of the contract are now their final offers.

The Guild offered several dates in October for the continuation of talks and is waiting for the company to confirm.

The two sides have been bargaining for a new contract for more than four years.