Watch for a Guild bulletin later this afternoon.

The Guild bargaining committee met with management this morning. To my mind it basically repudiated the good faith effort that the Guild has made to deal with the clearly dire financial situation facing the Chronicle. In the face of our willingness to work with them, the company proposal includes dramatic wage cuts (from 2% to 24% -- but with no cuts to Schedule A editorial or outside sales -- and a wage freeze until 1/1/06), the loss of a week's vacation, the loss of a week's sick leave, the loss of 2 holidays, elimination of severance pay, decimation of future pension benefits, the drastic reduction in parental rights for part-time schedules, elimination of sabbatical leaves of absence, and dozens of other changes that save no money whatsoever but broadly impact employee's lives and working conditions.

I may be forgetting something here.  With the exception of the wage cuts it is impossible to see how the other proposals impact their bottom line. The company has demanded that the proposal, described as the "best" that it is going to get, be accepted by July 25th or the company will withdraw it and replace it with a "less generous" proposal. Over the next 10 days the Guild committee will be working hard to seek a mutual agreement that addresses the Chronicle's true economic needs without erasing 68 years of basic decent working conditions.