Shop Paper #18: July 20, 2023

Hello, Shop F! Hope you all have had a restful few weeks since we saw many of you in person in July. Here's an update on where bargaining stands with management.

On July 20, the day after we were able to see many of you at the summer party – and show our unit pride, as well as pose important questions to CEO Mike Federle, which went substantively unanswered – the Bargaining Committee met with management for a bargaining session at Patrick Collins’ office. Forbes has made the question of where such meetings are hosted an unnecessary point of contention throughout the process; a big thanks to those unit members who were able to come to midtown to observe in person.

To start the session, Andrea Murphy presented our pay equity study. We asked Joyce Batista Ferrari for additional context to her Slack message that had upset many members of the unit that called into question the study’s substance, arguing it was missing “critical information.” In response, Patrick ultimately argued that Forbes believed the study was inherently flawed in its foundation, despite the study drawing upon unit census data submitted by Forbes.

Management appeared especially bothered by any inferences the study made about inequality in salary and raises based on gender. The committee strongly stands behind the unit’s work on the study, and noted to Forbes that it has highly qualified and professional reporters within its ranks who take such work as seriously. We maintain that management’s biggest issue with the study isn’t its methodology, but that it’s not prepared to accept the study’s disturbing results when it comes to compensation inequality.

The committee noted that some members had reported being told by managers, incorrectly, that they couldn’t receive a raise at present due to the bargaining negotiations. Ali Intres and Joyce said it had been communicated to managers not to say anything of this nature; the committee requested they send a newsroom-wide note affirming that status quo, which they refused to do.

We then discussed layoff procedures, which the unit will do everything it can to help avoid, but about which we are committed to the fairest and most transparent process, in keeping with other peer shops. Management’s position is that tenure should not play a factor, ostensibly for diversity reasons; the unit’s position is that tenure is a bedrock of such a structure, but that Forbes can always fairly compensate more senior employees it would choose to lay off to go outside seniority order. More importantly, Forbes must address the fact that it’s more tenured employees are disproportionately not diverse, both in hiring and retaining more underrepresented staff to reach such tenure.

We then discussed Hours and Overtime, where management continues to maintain that a flexible time-off policy precludes the need for any overtime pay or additional comp time. We discussed minimums and other ways of tracking after-hours or non-standard hour work to ensure that should the unit move to an FTO policy in the future, members’ rights and ability to actually make up for extra time would be protected and respected.

We then reached two tentative agreements, on Just Cause and Non-Discrimination. These are absolutely crucial proposals for any CBA, and reflect hard work by the committee in past remote bargaining sessions to get these close enough to put over the line in the meeting. The Just Cause proposal protects unit members by ensuring they only receive discipline or a discharge for just cause. The Non-Discrimination proposal ensure both parties will not discriminate against people across a number of criteria such as race, ancestry and citizenship status; that the company will not discriminate against Union members in any way; will refer to employees by their preferred pronouns and honor requests to update any publicly-available work with updated names; and continue to provide gender-neutral bathrooms at the Jersey City office and make reasonable efforts to do so in any other offices with employee workspaces.

To get these two proposals over the line, Forbes and the unit were able to effectively compromise and find common ground in both these agreements. However, the unit was only able to make measurable progress in this session because of the cumulative effect of our collective actions over the past year. We would not have gotten the just cause or non-discrimination agreements we did without your work –packing the bargaining room, working-to-rule, and confronting Federle directly.

We are gratified by the tentative agreements reached and look forward to maintaining this momentum in upcoming sessions. Our next session was tentatively planned for August 16, but Forbes’ representation has refused to meet remotely, despite – or perhaps because of – all of that hard work and our hard-fought progress. 

We continue to urge management to work with us to reach an agreement as fast as possible. Two years into bargaining, we on the committee are eager and working hard. Management games about where we bargain, or entertaining remote attendees, goes against how Forbes itself currently operates and isn’t helping us move forward.

 A huge thanks to Jonathan Ponciano, who has worked tirelessly on the committee and unit from the beginning. We know you will continue to be an ally as you embark on your exciting next chapter! And a hearty welcome to Zach Everson to the committee, who was already a huge help in his first session. We could use more support. If you’re passionate about key upcoming topics, from journalistic ethics to compensation, please reach out to your steward or a bargaining committee member to discuss potential involvement.

With solidarity,

Your bargaining committee

Zach Everson

Alex Konrad

Andrea Murphy

Jon Ponciano, signing off