From: Robert A. Jordan
Title: Boston Globe, Union President, retired
As President and Chief Negotiator of the Guild unit when the Lifetime Job Guarantee, among other key issues, was negotiated, I can bear witness that these fears did not begin with the Globe’s demand that the contract’s No Layoff clause be removed.
A few weeks earlier, Globe management filed a Unit Clarification Petition with the National Labor Relations Board, seeking to exempt, or remove, 25 unit positions affecting more than 130 employees from union jurisdiction, creating concerns among these employees that they would be without job protection and thus subject to layoffs at the whim of management. With this move, which many both within and outside the Guild saw as a direct assault on the Union, the Guild unit’s leadership and its members quickly realized that the upcoming negotiations would be for much more than a fair and reasonable contract. It would be a battle to save hundreds of jobs, and perhaps save the Union itself.
There was also a strong rumor throughout the Globe during these negotiations that the Globe wanted to get rid of the No Layoff clause and reduce labor costs to make the newspaper “more saleable” to a potential buyer. Despite the Globe’s denials, the rumor continued to grow.
In fact, during the last year of these intense negotiations, Globe management called a meeting of the Unions to announce that the New York Times and the Boston Globe had reached a “merger” agreement that would not significantly impact either newspaper’s operations. Of course, several weeks later in 1993, the rumor became fact: The New York Times had purchased the Globe for $1.1 billion. This announcement, after strong Globe denials, served to increase the Union’s distrust of the Globe at the bargaining table.
Nonetheless, the more than three-year battle resulted in a tentative agreement at the end of 1993 that the union membership ratified in early 1994. The “lifetime job guarantee”, under which all full-time employees can still be discharged for just cause, was the Globe’s compromise offer to the Union as a replacement for the No Layoff clause for all full-time employees that had been in the contract at least since the 1980s. But this issue was only part of the epochal history of these negotiations.
Under this contract, ratified by the Guild’s membership in early 1994, the Guild unit agreed to the Globe’s proposal to replace the No Layoff Clause, which originally covered all full-time hires at the newspaper, with the “lifetime job guarantee”, given only to all full-time employees hired before January 1, 1992, (which numbered nearly 700 full-time Guild unit employees out of 1,200 full-time and part-time employees). Of course, the Union had to fight for more than a year to improve the Globe’s original job guarantee proposal to the point where it gave adequate job security to all pre-1992 full-time hires.
The Guild unit, while working out an acceptable job guarantee list, had agreed after many bargaining sessions, to at least two other high priority Globe demands, which gave the company the right to implement:
A two-tier wage system, under which all new full-time and part-time employees in the advertising and business areas would be hired under a lower wage scale.
A new subcontracting agreement which allowed the Globe to outsource non-editorial functions in the bargaining unit that would be more expensive than purchasing these functions outside the Globe, provided no person would be displaced as a direct result of such subcontracting.
The Guild unit also agreed to a number of smaller Globe demands in exchange for more contributions to the joint Taft-Hartley health fund for full-time employees in the Guild unit. (Health benefits for part-time workers were achieved in the next contract.)
At the beginning of these negotiations, it became clear that the Globe wanted to change virtually every page of the contract that expired a few months earlier. But in the end, despite strong doubts on both sides early in the process, a collective bargaining agreement was finally reached, and the issue of unilaterally attempting to 130 employees from union jurisdiction was resolved. In essence, this battle for a fair and reasonable contract shows that the job guarantee was won the old-fashioned way – the Union earned it.
Today, more than 16 years later, the issue of the lifetime job guarantee, along with seniority and other contractual agreements, is again at the forefront of a bitter dispute, this one between the New York Times and the Globe unions. Unless the unions give up $20 million ($10 million from the Guild unit) in concessions, including removal of the lifetime job guarantees and giving up all seniority regarding layoffs, the New York Times vowed to shut down the Globe operation.
Although a potential shutdown of the Globe was very remote back in 1993, when it was showing a strong profit, the Globe and the Guild unit toward the end of its contract talks agreed to the following language, just in case:
“In the event of a dramatic and apparently irreversible downturn in the Globe’s business, the parties will meet to discuss what reductions, if any, are necessary to the no-layoff list.” The language goes on to say that these discussions may include Union proposals of alternatives to the no-layoff clause to reduce labor costs other than through reduction of the no-layoff list. Absent an agreement, arbitration was to be the next step to resolving the issue.
Of course, given the New York Times’ current threat to shut down the Globe in 30 days unless the involved unions agree to its demands, the Globe’s owners have virtually ignored this contractual effort to amicably resolve such conflicts. Ironically, as these harsh demands are made, rumors persist that the Times is trying to sell the fiscally bleeding Globe, a reminder of the early 1990s sale rumors during the Globe’s concession demands.
Perhaps the Globe’s owners in New York can look back 16 years and realize that even the most difficult issues, as this one certainly is, can be resolved to everyone’s benefit. That is, if they come to the table bringing not threats, but good ideas, and a resolve to work with, and not against, the Unions to save the livelihoods of many loyal hard-working employees who are still trying to put out a newspaper in a building shaking from a fiscal earthquake they did not create.
