Indianapolis NewsGuild

Our Guild members took a short break from work Friday afternoon and took a stand for some issues we care deeply about.

We stand for quality journalism – and the copy editors who make that happen.

We stand for decent health care – to keep ourselves and our families well.

We stand for justice – for our building service workers who haven’t seen a pay raise in more than four years.

We’ll keep presenting this message to Gannett – in as many ways as we can think of – until it sinks in. Won’t you stand with us?

Two Realities

When it comes to working for Gannett, parent company of The Indianapolis Star, there are two realities — the reality of those of us who actually make this company profitable every day, and the reality of upper management, who reap most of the rewards.

Look at the reality of our copy editors, whose jobs are about to be outsourced to Kentucky. Gannett wants to put these employees out of work by the end of the year. Management says it’s too much to give them 2 weeks of severance for each year of service. Yet, in the reality of the Gannett executive, it’s acceptable to give the CEO a golden parachute of $23-million.

Look at the reality of health insurance. Gannett wants to shortchange Guild workers on health coverage by providing less money for insurance than other employees. It would prefer we take their insurance, which costs more and covers less. Compare that to the reality of Gannett CEO Bob Dickey, whose executive bonus this year alone was $1.8-million.

Look at the reality of pay.

Half our workforce at The Indianapolis Star is still recovering from a 10% pay cut in 2009. And since then, pay hasn’t kept up with inflation. Worse still, is the plight of our custodial workers at the Indianapolis printing plant. They took the 10% pay cut and they haven’t seen a pay raise in more than four (4) years. These are the lowest paid employees in our company. Some have been with us 15 years and make $10.85 an hour. They struggle to buy groceries. One worker told me she supplements her budget with trips to the food pantry.

Gannett would deny this woman and her co-workers a pay raise of $1 an hour. Yet in the last three years, Gannett has doubled the pay of CEO Bob Dickey. He’s now paid $5.9 million a year.

That’s Gannett’s reality — enriching its executives at the expense of its employees.

Nothing irks news junkies more than a story — or heaven forbid, a headline — with a typo, a misspelling or a wrong name. Of all the journalists in a news operation, the last line of defense against such potentially embarrassing mistakes is the copy editor, a gifted wordsmith who reads for a living and who is an expert in but one subject — their local community. They do their jobs without fanfare and almost always anonymously, and under the tightest deadlines you can imagine. 

At The Indianapolis Star, Gannett has thinned the ranks of local copy editors in recent years, making it harder to keep such irksome mistakes out of the newspaper and away from its website. Now, though, Gannett wants to eliminate copy editing in Indianapolis altogether.

The Guild knows this is a bad idea. We’ve pushed back against it for years. We’ve been saying it during contract negotiations in the past few weeks. But Gannett is more determined than ever, demanding agreement on a proposal to eliminate the seven remaining Indianapolis copy editors. Gannett wants to shift their important work to people at a hub in Kentucky where copy editors with little knowledge of Indiana will try to make time to edit stories from the Star while also juggling the same duties for a handful of other Gannett newspapers in other states.

Gannett has told the Guild that if we don’t agree to their demand by Nov. 30, it will lay off five more Star journalists — and still move ahead with plans to outsource the copy editors.

That’s how it’s gone so far with Gannett during these contract talks — demands, deadlines and threats. Not negotiations. So we’re pushing back. You can see it in the newsroom. You can see it on social media. Soon, you’ll see it in the street.

Will you support our cause? Will you support good local journalism? Share this post with others. Tell Star management what you think of their plan and their negotiating tactics. Share the image below because what’s not to love about people who make things better without seeking glory for doing the job right?

Management’s latest contract proposal to the Guild has come with a threat — agree to their demands to outsource the Copy Editing work and abandon our proposals or they’ll lay off five more people.

That’s right, the Company now says there are five (5) new jobs in jeopardy in addition to those of five (5) copy editors. What those additional jobs are isn’t clear.

Ronnie Ramos outlined the ultimatum in an email Friday, saying the Copy Desk must be gone by Nov. 30. He made it sound like the Star was being gracious last month when it cut only two producers and proposed to eliminate copy editors.

Yes, this latest proposal has a “we’ll-shoot-the-hostages” mentality to it. In the opinion of your bargaining team, it is a ridiculous non-starter. But our opinions matter little. What matters more is what YOU are willing to do about. To that end, we’ve called an emergency Guild Members meeting Wednesday night.

This threat comes after a series of email exchanges between Guild negotiator Lou Grieco and Gannett lawyer John Fenix. The two sides haven’t met face to face since Oct. 26.

The Guild’s most recent proposal would have given in on the outsourcing of the Copy Editing work but with an enhanced severance for the copy editors: Extending their pay and health insurance equal to 2 weeks per year of a worker’s service, plus an additional six (6) weeks; up to a maximum 52 weeks; the minimum severance would be 12 weeks.

In addition, the Guild proposed 3 percent a year across-the-board pay raises for remaining employees for the next three years, a minimum wage of $15 an hour (primarily affecting custodians) and a continuation of the health insurance arrangement with the UFW.

The Star rejected most of that.

The Star would agree to no guaranteed pay raises. They want to fund health insurance at a rate less than what’s being offered to other employees. And while they would abide by the current contract’s layoff provisions (1 week of severance per year of service) they would offer no severance enhancements beyond six (6) months of COBRA and setting a floor of 12 weeks as the minimum severance.

If this wasn’t dismal enough, The Star added a poison pill — a clause that would enable either side to re-open negotiations at any time during the 2-year life of the contract.

Essentially, it renders a contract meaningless.

There are ways we can push back against ultimatums. There are ways we can make noise. We’ll discuss these on Wednesday night and in the days ahead.

Guild contract negotiations with IndyStar management began Tuesday, barely an hour after we were told two of our producers were laid off as part of the latest round of Gannett job cuts. Quickly, we learned, that the company’s intentions for job cuts aren’t over.

Gannett’s first proposal was to seek a change in the IndyStar contract that would allow local copy editing to be moved to the regional design studio in Louisville. Such a move would result in the elimination of seven jobs in Indianapolis, although two of the seven jobholders would be retained in new positions focused on proofreading headlines and front pages, and web production.

Guild leaders reacted with concern about the proposal, not only for the job losses but also for the potential damage to the quality of the news product. Late Tuesday afternoon, Guild leadership shared the outline of the company’s proposal with those potentially affected.

The Guild offered its own list of proposed contract changes, including:

> 3% annual wage increases over the next three years;

> A $15 minimum wage that would affect print plant custodians and sports clerks

> An extension of the Guild’s health care arrangement with the United Furniture Workers

> Adding the MLK Day as one of the Guild’s paid holidays;

> Expanded time off for funeral leave

> Increased holiday work pay

> Earlier Guild notification of employee performance issues

Guild president Bobby King opened the Guild’s case with some history: He noted that Tuesday’s layoffs were the seventh round of job reductions in eight years for the Star. He said half of the Guild’s current members were present for the 10% wage cut in 2009, and that some of them haven’t yet recovered those losses, much less kept up with inflation. He noted that custodians at the printing plant haven’t seen pay raises in more than four years. He promoted the benefits to both Guild members and management for the extension of the health care arrangement with the UFW. And he made the case that the remaining IndyStar workforce has willingly and eagerly adapted to whatever changes the evolving news business has demanded, producing work that has been honored both within Gannett and nationally.

The Guild represents approximately 75 IndyStar employees, including reporters, producers, copy editors, photographers, columnists and clerks.