Bulletins

June 17, 2016 East Bay Guild Bargaining Bulletin PLEASANTON — In the first significant conversations since the consolidation of the Bay Area dailies, East Bay Guild representatives met Friday with Digital First Media management to renew contract talks. The discussion focused on key open issues including pay, expenses and scheduling …

Guild members at the Hawaii Tribune-Herald rallied outside the Big Island newspaper office Thursday morning to demand a fair contract. Two days of Hilo talks start later Thursday and Friday.

For some reason, the Secret Service decided that the northeast men’s room on the third floor was a security risk during Bernie Sanders’ visit with the editorial board and declared it off limits for 2 1/2 hours.

Local 39521’s executive committee meeting scheduled for May 21, 2016, has been cancelled. The next Guild meeting will be an Exec Comm/Rep Assembly meeting on June 18 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm. 2016 meeting schedule

One thousand NewsGuild workers at 13 newspapers nationwide stand united today as we begin a new, more public phase of the Guild’s #NewsMatters campaign for fair contracts with Digital First Media.

Nearly 1,000 news workers at Digital First Media have launched a nationwide revolt against job cuts and profiteering they say are threatening local journalism at the nation’s second-largest newspaper company.

Send gossip, titillating trivia and scandal to: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Who says an ergonomics workshop is ho-hum?  Not us.  In fact, it’s practically X-rated.  Consider these words of advice from the Chronicle’s amazing ergonomist, Anna Brock: “Some employees really want to be on top (of the desk)” and “You really have to …

Press Democrat management continues to cite uncertainty in the news industry, rising health care costs and other factors as limits on what it can offer employees. Guild negotiators, also cognizant of these realities, sought reasonable pay increases in the 3 to 5 percent range and to limit increases in escalating health care costs for employees. But management balked at the offer.

Guild members and staff met for a third time with DFM management today to discuss the company’s proposal to merge the BANG and Mercury News contracts. We opted to suspend these talks and return to bargaining each contract separately. Once again, the Company had no pay proposal for workers who would be covered by the merged contract, and the Company also continued to propose that advertising employees would lose union protection.

Management is now proposing a 1 percent annual pay increase for employees who meet acceptable performance standards. Health care costs would remain the same for 2016, but by 2017, more of the financial burden would shift to employees and eventually there would be no cap on the employee share at all.