'NY Times' Digital Protest: The Response

Earlier, I wrote about an effort by members of The New York Times's Digital Guild to call attention to their need for a new contract that would give them wage parity with the paper's print-side employees. Assistant managing editor Bill Schmidt just responded with a memo to staff articulating the paper's position in advance of the resumption of negotiations next week.

Here's the memo:

To the staff

Next Monday, representatives of The Times and the Newspaper Guild will sit down to resume negotiations over the labor contract that covers digital employees within the newsroom. Ordinarily, such discussions take place behind closed doors. But given the level of concern among our digital colleagues about the difference in pay that still exist between those covered by the expired digital contract, and those doing similar work under a separate print contract, we thought it is important to set out publicly The Times position in these talks.

When the Guild and the company last met to negotiate the digital contract in June, the company put on the table a proposal that sought to specifically target the issue of wage inequity. We proposed that the company and the Guild adopt weekly pay scales for producers, web designers, online reporters and video journalists at the same levels as those of print journalists, effective March 31, 2009. Digital employees would also become eligible for a pay differential for night work, just as their colleagues are in the newspaper, as a well a substantial interim raise in 2008 to cover the period since the digital contract expired, in March of this year.

In making this proposal, we acknowledge that digital employees would continue working under contractual work rules that are different from those that apply to their colleagues under the newspaper contract. As we have said many times, the company believes that the contract work rules that govern the newspaper contract are outdated, and need to be changed.

Long term, it remains our goal to have a common set of work rules that apply to all Guild employees, print and digital alike, and which will reflect the needs of a 21st century workplace. We also believe that reaching this goal will involve a long and difficult negotiation. For that reason, we think it is important that both sides should meet as often and as long as necessary -- now -- to negotiate a successor to the expired digital contract. It is critical that we address the differences in pay within the newsroom before we take on those other more complicated issues still ahead of us.

Bill Schmidt