Dear fellow CNI employee,
We have talked with all of you during the past two weeks regarding the possibility of forming a union. Many of you found the prospect quite intriguing. However many of you wanted more information and had questions about the process.
Below are some of the issues that have been raised:
1) job security:
We, as a group, have none currently. Evident by the last six months, management proved their ability to arbitrarily fire us. The fear of losing our jobs has been exasperated by the lack direction and foresight on the part of the management. How many e-mail addresses have you had in the last two years? How many times has your job duties, responsibilities changed during the last two years? Do you remember the day that management told you that you had to "reapply" for your job? Or how about the day that you were informed of their decision?
Also, the question of whether management can threaten you with your job if you are for the union. Under federal law, employers are prohibited from job action against employees attempting to form a union.
Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) you have the legal right to form a union in your workplace. The NLRA says:
Section 7: "Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representation of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining . . . ."
Section 8(a): "It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer . . . to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7. . . ."
If we unionize, we would be protected by the collective bargaining agreement. Management would have to deal with CNI employees as one unit instead of 30 individuals. Strength is in the numbers.
2) pay:
We, as a group, are not nearly paid what our fellow journalists in the same company are paid. Let's say Mary, a reporter with CNI, makes $13 an hour. Mary, before taxes and benefits are taken out of her pay check, makes $1,040 every two weeks. Mary clears about $27,000 a year. Mary has a friend she went to journalism school that got lucky and landed a job with the Journal Sentinel. According to the current union contract, her friend makes $23 an hour, $1,840 every two weeks or $47,840 before taxes and benefits. Also Mary does not get paid overtime if she works more than 8 hours a day. Her friend gets time and a half for those long days. Her friend also gets paid a lot more for working weekends and holidays. Mary actually gets paid a little more than a rookie clerk, someone that opens the mail and retrieves the faxes.
Current Journal Sentinel contract can be found here. http://my.execpc.com/~guild51/contract/contract.html
Although nothing has been discussed or negotiated, pay will be most likely at the top of our agenda if we unionize.
According to the International Union of Operating Engineers Web site: Union workers earned significantly more wages than non-union workers did. For instance, the average union worker earned $750 per week, compared to only $617 for non-union workers. That’s a difference of $133 per week. For Latinos, other minorities and women, the wage differences for union members versus non-union workers are even greater. For the year 2000, the earnings difference between union and non-union workers was 28%, and average of $154.00 extra per week.
Full article can be found here: http://www.iuoe.org/organizing/rights.htm
3) process:
There are four steps to forming a union.
1. Contact. This is the stage we are completing at the moment. The stage involves talking with coworkers and determining the interest to move forward. It seems after talking with many of you, that this is something that we are interested in pursuing.
2. Committee. This stage involves the forming of a leadership committee. This committee starts to act as the union. We will write a mission statement. The committee should provide leadership, communicate with fellow employees, collect information and assessment support for the union.
3. Campaign. During this stage, assessment of support continues. The major part of this stage is the signing of a public petition supporting the union. After the petition is signed by everyone who wants to, it is sent to the National Labor Relations Board, which will oversee a secret ballot vote. If approved by 50 percent plus one, the union is certified by the NLRB. At this point, the employer, Journal Communications in this case, is legally required to negotiate with the union.
4. Contract. A bargaining committee will be formed to negotiate a contract with our employer.
This process is outlined in more detail at
http://www.cwa-union.org/organize/
4) Objections
The most intriguing that I have heard during the past two weeks is that Journal Communications can not afford to pay us more. Let's say that all of, after this all shakes out, that each of us makes $12,000 more a year. To be conservative, that would be $600,000 that the company would have to find a year. During the last 12 months the company has made $55 million.
Stock information can be found here: http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/results/hilite.asp?symbol=US:JRN
If they can't afford it, they are lying or they don't know how to handle their money.
