The Milwaukee Newspaper Guild has filed a grievance and is continuing to work on a case involving vacation payout. The case in question involves the Transitional Vacation Accounts (TVAs), which affect employees hired since the merger. Journal Sentinel Inc. management wanted those people to be placed on an earn-as-you-go vacation system. Thus, those workers no […]
Veteran union leader Dave Kirner has been named to lead the Milwaukee Newspaper Guild’s bargaining committee in negotiations on recent Journal Communications retirement changes. Kirner, a photo technician, is a Guild board member and former president, as well as a former leader of our sister Communications Workers of America local in the composing room. He […]
Guild and Journal Sentinel Inc. negotiators will meet soon to discuss how much bargaining-unit work MKE managers should be allowed to do. In the main Journal Sentinel newsroom, the contract limits bargaining-unit work by managers. Because MKE is a new operation, the Guild agreed not to file any grievances over bargaining-unit work by the publication’s […]
You haven’t seen any campaign commercials for this election, but you still have candidates to vote for. The Milwaukee Newspaper Guild will elect its next Executive Board at the membership’s annual meeting, at noon Sept. 18 at Turner Hall. At stake are 10 offices, all with one-year terms starting Oct. 1: President (our top leader […]
Here are some things you might not have realized about the retirement options being offered by Journal Sentinel Inc. — unless you read all the fine print: * If you take the option of freezing your pension benefits at the current level and taking the 3% annual employer contribution to your 401(k), the company won’t […]
Four Milwaukee Newspaper Guild members have stepped up to take on new responsibilities, replacing colleagues who have left our bargaining unit. The Guild’s board has confirmed Mike Johnson as wage data coordinator and Amy Rodenburg as newsletter editor. Johnson, a Waukesha Bureau reporter and steward, will be responsible for checking payroll information to ensure that […]
Journal Sentinel Inc. has agreed to negotiate with the Milwaukee Newspaper Guild over changes to the Journal Communications pension plan, after the Guild filed a grievance on the issue. That grievance protests the company’s decision to offer veteran employees a choice of retirement plans — continuing in the pension plan or freezing current benefits in […]
We really think it’s fixed now. Repeated problems have interfered with people receiving e-mail reminders when new items are posted on this blog. We thought we had this fixed before, and we asked people to sign up again, but that didn’t work. So we have now changed subscription services altogether, from bloglet.com to blogarithm.com. Subscriptions […]
Milwaukee Newspaper Guild leaders plan to review an abrupt change in the company’s pension plan. Many Journal Sentinel Inc. employees have received letters from the company in recent days, announcing the pension changes. The letter says that current employees will have a “choice” (the letter puts that word in quotes twice, as if corporate executives […]
Milwaukee Newspaper Guild members elected Amy Hetzner as treasurer and Mark Johnson as an at-large board member at Local 51’s membership meeting Monday. Hetzner, a Waukesha Bureau reporter, was appointed interim treasurer by the local’s Executive Board last month, after longtime Treasurer Bob Helbig was named to the management position of Journal Sentinel deputy business […]