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18 January 2007
Management offer to mailers
'almost identical' to 2002 strike trigger
TNG/CWA British Columbia | TNG Canada
Local 30403
"Total decimation" is how
Ray Rudersdorfer describes the Victoria
Times Colonist's
initial offer at the opening of negotiations to renew
a collective agreement with the newspaper's mailroom
staff.
"It was almost identical to
what we went on strike over in 2002," says the
president of the Local that represents about 45 workers
at the CanWest daily.
Although three days of talks
had been scheduled to begin on Tuesday, they broke
off after only four hours when Rudersdorfer rejected
the company's "very
specific" proposals that were "drastic, by
British Columbia union standards."
He says he was expecting negotiations
with the Times Colonist would be tough, "simply
because the mailers in B.C. newspapers are the last
ones in the country who have hiring-hall agreements
and have a fair amount of control over their work
and how it is performed, as well as having well-paid
jobs. The company wants to bring us down to their
non-union competitors' standards, even though it's
making lots of money."
Rudersdorfer says the union
agreed to give the company a break on labour costs
in the last collective agreement, which expired on
Jan. 1, 2007, by agreeing to introduce a new classification
of worker. "Trainees" would
receive up to 60 per cent of a journeyman's wage scale
and could perform many of the jobs usually done by
apprentices.
But TNG-CWA Local 30403 recently entered into a pact
with the Communications Energy and Paperworkers (CEP)
union to support each other in contract negotiations
and not allow a further watering-down of any of their
collective agreements in Western Canada. The CEP represents
workers at the Calgary Herald,
Edmonton Journal, Vancouver Sun and Province, as well as the Victoria
Times Colonist.
At the Colonist, bargaining
is done through a joint council, with each of three
Locals bargaining "peculiars" with
the company before they come together to negotiate "common" issues.
The Victoria-Vancouver Island Newspaper Guild (TNG
Canada Local 30223) got off to a rocky start with the
company a week earlier, when publisher Bob McKenzie
set the tone for future meetings, stating that "I
am not as concerned about morale as you think I should
be — it's overrated."
Great contracts in B.C.
Rudersdorfer is undeterred
by management's bluster, however. He has a track
record of negotiating industry-leading contracts
for his members and, despite years of experience
on the union side of the table, managed to score
a couple of "firsts" last year.
In June, he met with management at Western Mail Tech
in Delta, B.C., over a grievance for unfair dismissal,
and took the opportunity to discuss minor changes to
the contract that was due to expire the following month.
Having settled those in the face-to-face meeting, the
rest of the negotiations were conducted via email.
"I have a good rapport with management at Mail
Tech, which I organized in the 1980s," says Rudersdorfer.
In the end, the 20 staff at the back-to-front union
shop, wound up with a three-year agreement that gives
them annual wage increases totalling 15 per cent over
the life of the contract, plus improvements in vacations
and health benefits.
"It was the first time I'd conducted negotiations
by email," says Rudersdorfer. And, laughing, he
adds that he went off on holiday and wound up finalizing
the agreement "while on a cruise ship sailing
from Singapore to Hong Kong."
Several months earlier, he was able to achieve another
first: harassment language was introduced into the
contract that covers the 70 to 80 people who work at
Mail-O-Matic Services Ltd. in Burnaby. The clause arose
because of an incident in the workplace, and has since
been emulated by other union shops in B.C.
Rudersdorfer speaks glowingly of the excellent relationship
his Local has with the family-owned and fully unionized
Mail-O-Matic, which is now the largest mailing house
in the province. The owners, who are members of the
union, used to be mailers at Pacific Press (Vancouver
Sun and Province) and started the company during a
nine-month strike in 1978-79.
Their contract, which runs from April 2006 until March
2008, was negotiated in May and contains across-the-board
wage increases of four per cent annually, plus improvements
in pension plan and RSP contributions.
The contract also contains a profit-sharing agreement,
which translates to annual bonuses for all employees,
pro-rated according to number of hours worked. In 2006,
there was $150,000 to be divvied up, with the average
bonus working out to $2500. |
