231 Days Later, McClatchy Makes Wage Offer
Eight months after One Herald Guild first proposed a detailed wage plan, McClatchy on Thursday provided its first proposal for paying journalists at the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald.
The proposals are far apart.
OHG proposed a plan that would address long-standing inequities in pay between the newsrooms and among colleagues based on gender and race. It would require the company to invest $1 million to create a fair wage structure for all unit members, with a starting minimum annual wage of $52,000.
McClatchy proposed a two-tier plan that would set a minimum annual wage at $48,000 for current staff and $45,000 for new hires. Both minimums would be frozen for the life of the three-year proposed contract and would not advance, as they would under the Guild’s proposal. There would be a one-time 3% raise for those who earn more than that minimum.
Pay raises would not be retroactive, even though the Heralds’ employees have not been awarded merit pay increases since 2019. For those earning more than 48,000, the proposal would result in an effective raise of about 1% a year since then.
McClatchy’s proposal would cost $259,443 to implement and leave in place the unfair differences in pay that were an impetus for OHG to organize. The company responded to the question of addressing inequality by telling OHG’s bargaining committee that under McClatchy’s proposal, individual employees can bargain for wage increases on their own to address inequities on a case-by-case basis.
The company acknowledged its proposal is just a start, and conceded it is incomplete. They also stated the company would consider giving more -- including higher wages and retroactive pay -- as the parties get closer to agreement.
“The delta will narrow,’’ said Aaron Agenbroad, McClatchy’s lead negotiator and a lawyer with the Jones Day law firm in California. “We look forward to continuing to narrow the gap.”
OHG’s goal is, and has always been, to set a sensible minimum “journalist living wage” for newsrooms that not only rewards professional experience but recognizes the multilingual and data skills of the current staff. The union developed a proposal that corrected the inequities between the journalists at el Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald and addressed the unfair wages paid to people of color and women in our newsrooms.
Although it took McClatchy 231 days to respond to One Herald Guild’s wage proposal, its plan attempts to do none of that.
Catherine Ryan, labor relations director for McClatchy’s People Team, summarized the proposal as “a wage floor” with “a percentage of increase” but confirmed “there’s no defined standards” at this point for ending the inequities.
The One Herald Guild proposal would provide new employees with no qualifying professional experience a wage of $52,000 a year. After one year of experience, the minimum would increase to $59,792. In the fourth year, an employee would achieve the top minimum of $70,200. For employees with prior work experience, that time would be credited.
Also under the OHG plan, every employee would receive a four percent raise when our contract is ratified and there would be a newsroom-wide annual four percent raise for all employees over each of the next two years.
Under the company’s plan, the one-time 3% raise would be in place for the length of the three-year contract, but each year either side could reopen the contract to revise the wage plan. Each year, the company could propose wage and benefit cuts.
The company drafted a spreadsheet that reflects what the raise means for each member of the unit. Please contact a member of the bargaining team to find out what the proposal would mean for you.
The company’s proposal would raise the company’s payroll base of $6,235,604 to $6,495,047, for an annual increase in wages for the unit of $259,443, according to calculations by OHG’s bargaining committee.
Monica Richardson, executive editor of the Heralds, called the meeting “a very important day.”
“It’s important for each of you, each of us, for the Miami Herald,” she said, at the onset of the meeting.
She said “we are all committed to reaching an agreement” and added: “You all have talked about not feeling valued and that’s something any leader anywhere does not want to hear coming into a newsroom.’’
In order to recognize the extra work done by reporters who speak multiple languages or have coding skills, OHG proposed a $100 per week raise, on top of base salary. The company countered OHG’s proposal with a much lower weekly pay rate for multilingual reporters who obtain a certificate and regularly do translation work.
For employees who obtain certifications in Spanish, Haitian Creole and Portuguese from a range of agencies and are regularly required to translate as part of their job, the company offered a $25 weekly differential for employees who obtain such certifications.
Managing Editor Rick Hirsch said this counterproposal is intended to address problems with reporters translating stories and not being compensated for it, an issue raised by OHG members nearly a year ago. He added it is not intended to apply to workers who regularly report in multiple languages.
In addition, OHG proposed that employees who hold a current Remote Pilot Certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (qualifying them to operate drones) shall receive an additional $50 per week, on top of their base salary and $100 per week for training and certification as a analytics professional. The company rejected offering a salary differential for each of those additional skills.
Another aspect of the union’s proposal that management outright rejected: a premium wage classification for employees who may have unlawfully been declared to be salaried and ineligible for overtime. About one-third of OHG members are currently deemed by the employer to be exempt from overtime. Federal law states that employees making less than $107,432 a year are presumptively eligible for overtime.
OHG’s bargaining committee is studying the details of the company’s proposal and discussing how to respond. The company needs to provide counterproposals on other critical economic issues so the Guild can examine employees’ full compensation package.
In other areas of the contract:
The Guild and the company moved closer on a discipline article that would require the company to prove discipline cases to a neutral third party and institute progressive discipline. Exceptions would apply to “serious” journalism ethics violations. The Guild asked for more clarity on that term.
The Guild said the company’s holiday proposal should not cause workers to “lose” holidays they have earned. It said if an employee works a holiday, they should get a “make up” day later. This provision is clearly stated in Bradenton’s employee policies, and it is also described in Miami’s employee policies and versions of it apply in other McClatchy shops.
On vacations, OHG said it continued to oppose efforts to take away a 5th week of vacation from employees who were hired before Jan. 1, 2010 and who will complete 20 years of service, as is the current policy. There are 37 people in the newsroom who would lose this benefit under the company’s proposal.
The union offered a counterproposal on an editorial integrity article that would confirm employees right to remove bylines, get consulted about corrections and edits, and provide legal protection for keeping sources confidential. The company said it was evaluating the language
On the article related to people who take so called “content leaves” to write books and take part in other creative projects, OHG asked the company to look at a joint image licensing plan that would bring additional revenue to both the employees and the company. But it also said the company’s proposal to require management approval for all outside work needed more discussion.
OHG was represented by co-chairs Mary Ellen Klas and Joey Flechas, bargaining chair Daniel Chang, chief negotiator Tony Winton, and the team was joined by Bradenton Herald NewsGuild chair Jessica De Leon.
McClatchy was represented by Agenbroad, Ryan, Richardson, Hirsch, and HR executives Maria Torres and Natalie Piner.