Bargaining update 4/14: Leave, hybrid work, severance and AI
We wrapped up our second round of bargaining this week — thank you so much to everyone who attended our fruitful pizza and mobilizing meeting last week, and to those who requested a truly gorgeous Seattle Times Union T-shirt (coming soon!)
Last month, the bargaining committee presented management with all our proposals, in the interest of efficient communication. This week, management responded to some of our proposals.
Wages
Management did not respond to the proposed wage chart we presented at our first bargaining meeting on March 17, despite requesting to delay this second bargaining session to have adequate time to review our proposals and prepare.
PTO and Parental Leave Protections
Management rejected our proposal to increase the PTO accrual cap from 200 to 240 hours, and to increase job protection for parental leave from six months to one year.
The company did not address our request to increase every employee’s baseline vacation from two weeks to three weeks. They accepted the addition of one annual floating holiday, which cannot be used within seven days of another national holiday unless it is being used to observe a religious holiday.
Our proposal to allow donations of time from one’s Extended Illness Bank to a fellow employee in need was also rejected, and the company suggested that a mechanism for providing such help already exists: GoFundMe.
Hybrid work protections
A high priority for guild members, our proposed protections around hybrid work were dismissed by management. They rejected our proposal to limit the number of in-office days to two a week.
Company representatives assured us that they have no plan to change the RTO policy but declined to codify that in our contract and stressed the importance of in-person collaboration.
Severance
Management similarly declined our request to formalize any language around severance, saying they have provided severance in the past and won't agree to a severance policy without looser restrictions around seniority and layoffs.
AI-related job protections
Management countered our proposed language aimed at protecting our jobs from being replaced by AI with language we find woefully inadequate, and which honors management’s need for flexibility in an uncertain future while disregarding our own need for security in that same future.
Critically, they rejected entirely a subsection stipulating that AI usage “shall not result in any staff reduction of bargaining unit employees.”
In addition, a subsection laying out ways in which AI shall not be employed, including but not limited to writing stories and interviewing sources, was replaced with: “The use of Generative AI to perform news gathering activities shall be governed by the Employer document “Policies on AI and Newsgathering.”
That document, as defined in an earlier subsection, “is subject to regular change at the Employer’s discretion.”
What’s next
Our next bargaining session will be Tuesday, April 28. We plan to fight hard on all of these issues, and we expect wages to be a difficult part of negotiations.
We’ll keep you updated and as always, please reach out to any of us if you have questions, ideas, concerns or anything else to address. We want to hear from you!