Update, Feb. 26: Our bargaining bulletins are usually brief, but Tuesday’s contained some pretty big news: Company representatives are proposing that we explore merging our new BANG-EB Guild unit with the established Guild unit at the Mercury News.

What does this mean exactly? In a consolidated Guild unit, we would share the same contract with our coworkers at the Mercury News, and managers likely would have more leeway to coordinate operations across our newsrooms.

We’ve always used the term “One Big BANG,” and we think the idea of formally creating a seamless Bay Area News Group deserves a serious look amid our current financial crisis. So our bargaining team and its counterpart from Merc have agreed to talk about the idea. With the help of federal mediator David Weinberg, we’ll enter talks with the company in early March to begin discussing what a merged unit could look like, and how employees might be affected.

This is by no means a done deal: A merger would be a complex undertaking, requiring support from members of all the affected units, and involving separate votes of our members and Guild members at the Mercury News. It won’t happen unless all sides see evidence that it’s in the best interest of our company and its workers.

So we want to hear from you: How would you feel about sharing a union contract with our colleagues in San Jose? What concerns or questions do you have?

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By Bleys W. Rose — Staff Writer and Guild Unit Chair,
Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Newsroom staff at our 85,000-circulation paper work under a contract we recently extended through 2011. Most of us, including experienced reporters, photographers and copy editors, started 2008 with minimum base pay of $1,100 a week, and our pay will be going up (more…)

Karl Fischer: It’s finally here — Starting now, an anonymous salary survey
for BANG-EB employees is live on the revamped OneBigBANG.org website.
Please pop over some time before Monday 2/25 and click on the survey link
in the upper right-hand corner.

I’ve heard a lot of people wonder how well or poorly they are compensated
relative to their peers. Here’s your opportunity to find out. I hope most of
you will use it and encourage your friends to use it.

This survey is not scientific, but the more who try it, the more accurate it
will be. It’s anonymous, so we have no way of telling who votes. We can
tell if someone votes more than once, but that’s about it. So you’re on the
honor system.

Salary parity remains a top concern for folks around the company. We all
would like better pay, of course, but that’s a separate issue. People want
to know that they’re paid fairly, relative to others in the company who do
similar work. And there is reason to wonder. I’ve heard a lot of different
salary numbers while making the rounds, and from what little I have heard,
pay is all over the map. We’ve never had a pay scale at the Contra Costa
papers, so we have no real sense of what compensation we should accept
for the work we do.

Knowing where we’re all starting from — through this survey — is a first
step toward knowing what is fair and realistic pay in our company.

Traditionally, the only way to get a large raise is to get an outside job offer.
If management wants to keep you, they bump you up. There’s nothing too
wrong with that system; employees with the most to offer wind up with
better pay. But it doesn’t reward loyalty. Nor does it reward naivete — if
you assume the company will just take care of you, you will wind up behind.

The adage that you never get treated better than the day you walk in the
door applies here, and it makes sense. The company must offer competitive
wages to newcomers or they won’t accept the job. What is competitive can
change rapidly, particularly in the Bay Area. We know, for example, that the
company currently offers a new reporter about $40,000 — considerably more
than when I got hired.

It’s good that management pays attention to the need to raise the starting
point. Trouble is, the cost-of-living raises that are offered during our annual
performance reviews often fail to keep up. They’re not bad — last year most
people got 2.5 to 3 percent — but it’s a very slow rise. In many cases, that
means workers who’ve been around for years either make less than newly
hired employees or are just cracking the salary that newcomers walk in with.

Management has worked on these issues for years, and there’s a continuing
campaign to bring up the pay of those editors deem substantially underpaid.
Still, it would undoubtedly help to raise the known bottom line for all workers,
not just newcomers or the grossly underpaid.

This is one area where a guild contract could help. Most contain minimum pay
scales that relate compensation to years of service. They don’t prevent one
from negotiating an “overscale” salary — minimum is the key word. It just
raises the floor for everyone. Click here for the survey.

WE NEED LEADERS: For many of us, talking union felt pretty scary at first.
But after a month of being pretty open about my role in all this, I can happily
report that I’ve suffered no ill effects. And I know my co-chairs Karl Fischer
and Michael Manekin can say the same thing. Nothing bad happens to those
who speak out in favor of the guild.

And if you’re ready to step up and go public yourself, you can really help out.
Lending your name to the effort shows our coworkers that it’s perfectly safe
to talk about, and ask questions about, what a union would mean to our
newsroom. Who you are matters too: as our coworkers start to see the truly
talented and hardworking journalists who are helping and supporting us, they
will understand this effort in a new way.

Here are a few simple things you can do right now:

* Wear a GO GUILD button in the office, every day. Jet me an e-mail, and I’ll
rush one into your hands. More and more of us are doing this. We hope that
you will too.

* Talk to your coworkers about what we’re doing and why. If they’re at all
interested in learning more, get a home e-mail so we can add them to our
email list. Direct them either to me or to Karl.

* Post a comment at the end of this newsletter. Sign your name. Or better yet,
write a testimonial for the website on why you believe organizing is the right
choice for our newsrooms. We’ll take your picture and add it to our ever-growing
gallery of personal voices. And yeah, some of ours are long, but yours doesn’t
have to be.

– Sara Steffens

COMING CLEAN ABOUT THE OUTSIDERS: OK, I have a confession to make.
Management has it half-right about outsiders coming in, trying to turn you all
into dues-paying guild members.

There are thousands of concerned fellow journalists involved in this conspiracy.

Among them: The Mercury News guild, which works with us because they worry
about their own future. They saw what happened when MediaNews folded the
ANG newsrooms in with the nonunion CCN — they decertified the ANG guild,
and all those workers lost the ability to negotiate with a collective voice.

Will the Merc be next? It could be. We’re owned by the same corporate parent.
We all work in the region. And managers can more easily meet cost-cutting
goals if employees lack the legal ability to protest.

Chronicle workers have similar concerns, but with a longer view. They know
that if the Merc contract vanishes, they alone will work for substantially better
pay and benefits than the rest of the region’s newspaper employees. That will
weaken their ability to hold on to what they have — if nobody else gets it,
why should they?

And the national guild definitely worries about what’s happening here. If key
newspaper contracts die in the liberal, expensive and sophisticated Bay Area,
what does that portend for newspaper pay and benefits nationwide?

You can see why they want to help. I don’t think they are “outsiders.” They’re
fellow journalists, working for the good of journalists everywhere, and at least
in this way our interests align with theirs.

If we don’t do something now, at our company, we’re not the only ones at risk.
All newspaper workers in the region stand to lose bargaining strength, and in
the process their ability to help determine fair compensation for their work.
That is why you see these “outsiders,” as management puts it, supporting us
as we work to organize BANG-EB. We need their help, and they need us.
Without us, it will be harder for them to cling to decent salaries and benefits.

We are a sapling on the precipice of a mudslide. We can fall as far as gravity
will take us, or we can catch and stick upon the roots of established neighbors.
How far we slide depends at least in part upon our actions now. So take the
salary survey. It’s a first step toward sticking someplace uphill.

– Karl Fischer

MARK YOUR CALENDARS, ONE BIG BASH: We’re throwing a party. A big one,
open to all newsroom employees in the BANG-East Bay, with special appearances
by a few of our former coworkers. No agenda, no strong-arming, just a chance to
meet your peers and have a drink or two. You don’t have to think any certain way
to come, and significant others are more than welcome. Mark your calendars for
Friday, March 7, and watch for an Evite in your inboxes this week.

DON’T FORGET: “THE FUTURE OF THE NEWSROOM“, 2/20

Don’t miss this timely discussion, subtitled “New opportunities, collateral damage,
and effects on journalists in the digital era.” It takes place from 6:30-8 p.m. this
Wednesday (Feb. 20) at UC Berkeley, at North Gate Hall, Room 105. It’s free.

Speakers include Salon.com managing editor Jeanne Carstensen, California Media
Project director Louis Freedberg, San Jose Mercury News guild rep Luther Jackson,
and Matt Mansfield, deputy managing editor at the Merc. Click here for more info.

Thanks,

Karl Fischer
Sara Steffens