Thursday, July 10, 2008

Save Our Trade: Negotiations Update


By Ronnie Pineda

Tribune's announcement of 250 (MORE) employee cuts here at the Los Angeles Times has been a concern for pressroom employees, having just gone through buy-outs a couple of months ago. We lost another 27 presspersons and 4 pressroom utility employees at that time bringing our pressroom staffing to approximately 250 bargaining unit employees between the two pressrooms. Negotiation Committee brother Keith Denson asked if the pressroom was again targeted in this round of cuts, to which the company's lead negotiator responded, we are not. That should be of comfort to many of us who survived the last round of buy-outs. Lets hope that our industry levels off, or begins to improve at some point soon to establish and maintain some stability to our staffing levels in all departments.

Jump to entire article by clicking on link below.

Save Our Trade: Negotiations Update

4 comments:

Old OC said...

“Our first order of business was to address the merit based wage increases currently being given to production employees.”

"We have given an information request to the company pertaining to the wage increases and informed them that we would accept a wage increase along with all production employees as was done last year and will continue to bargaining wage increases in the interim."

We “informed them that we would accept a wage increase”........You guys are something else! Aren’t you being a little hypocritical?????? Don’t you remember the rules that you are playing by....... but I guess they only apply to the company not the union!!!!!!!

Ronnie Pineda said...

What rule are you referring to OLD OC? What rules did they follow when they took out another 31 pressroom employees? Do you think you would have gotten a raise over two percent if we weren't currently represented? Doubt it very much.

Old OC said...

Oh... here we go again!!!

That's all I've heard for the last 40 years is how the company only gave increases because of the "fear" of the union! Get a life.. believe me you and your union are not that important, except to your own ego!!!!!

Rule?? Your wages are frozen!!!

Ronnie Pineda said...

Who froze our wages? We are negotiating our raise which will be in writing.

We make the wages we do now because of men like Bill Torrance who fought and won representation in the 60's. Everything we had over the last 4 decades was built on that union contract.

What makes you think the company fears the union? Their only fear is that many more of you will join us and hope this raise will convince you not to. This idea is already backfiring as I have heard many complaints already about how this "merit" raise is being disbursed. Favortism is back along with the merit precess.

Why did the company fight so hard to keep the union out? Because they want absolute control over us and our shops. They don't fear unions, they just don't want to have to negotiate with us if they don't have to.

And by the way,I do have a life, and I'm very comfortable with my ego.