Bargaining bulletin: Long way to go on FTO

Colleagues,

Today we presented the company with a letter about the majority of our members' pledges to use all our time off. But it's obvious there's still quite a way to go to get us the paid time off, including family leave, we deserve.

Immediately afterward, Tribune representatives finally agreed to separate time off into a sick time allotment and a vacation allotment, but their proposal would cost you one paid day off!!! Your actions got them to this point.

This proves a couple of things: they are hearing us, and they know what we want, but we need to keep at it. Your actions are pushing change at the table, but the company still wants to play games.

The company's time off proposal did not include anything on paid parental leave.
This omission came on the same day the company hosted a women's corporate brown bag session that was supposed to address empowering women in the workplace.The company totally missed the mark with this call, calling on women to make light of being interrupted to keep from harming their male colleagues' egos. Instead of working toward women's equity through equal salaries and paid family leave, company representatives instead told women to be "delicate" and make jokes about being interrupted to soften the blow to their male coworkers.

We also continued to discuss workweeks and overtime, including discussions about whether your workday should start when you leave your home office or when you get to an assignment. We're still discussing the company's most recent proposal that attempts to address some of your concerns.

More discussion of employee health and safety measures meant more examples of how little the company cares about its employees.

The company will ask you to cover traumatic stories. But when you need to go out on workers comp to deal with the aftereffects, Tribune doesn't care that you aren't receiving your full pay. They made no bones about rejecting our proposal of making up the difference between workers comp and your normal pay.

In Solidarity,
The Joint Bargaining Committee