by Ron Kutak, Guild Executive Director

I'm happy to report that we have recently concluded negotiations for an agreement with New York Times Television and now have a contract covering about 100 people employed there in post production. This was the critical and final step in our year-long organizing drive and it is the company's first contract covering post production.

The campaign was a very important one for us and we're pleased that it turned out so well. Our success shows that we have the capabilities needed to organize a fixed facility from the ground up and in the face of a very expensive campaign waged by an outside consulting firm hired by the Times.

We have now negotiated a very good first agreement, which provides for proper overtime payments, health insurance and working conditions that were not available before. Thanks to all the Guild staff who helped to make this possible. Most important though, was the resolve of the New York Times employees. From the very beginning of our effort through the successful conclusion of negotiations, the employees never wavered from their commitment to the union and the idea they deserved better than what they were getting -- despite the well-funded and tough anti-union campaign. Their commitment, their non-stop internal organizing and their communication with each other are the major reasons that they have an agreement today. They deserve our congratulations and a warm welcome into the Editors Guild.

This contract is part of our overall organizing strategy. One of our key goals is to organize the kinds of shows that today are generally non-union, and in the process, to make union membership appealing to a younger workforce at the beginning of their careers. In these situations, we are helping to create a new generation of union members, who we hope will see union participation as a part of their lives for as long as they work in post production.

Promoting the idea of unionism to a younger workforce is difficult, especially in the high-tech world in which we now find ourselves. The value of union membership has been downplayed in the media, and younger workers have many misconceptions about union membership. Our challenge is not only to demonstrate the union's worth by improving wages and conditions, but to show younger workers that collective action works.

The Editors Guild in Chicago

In the wake of our successful effort at New York Times TV, the Guild is now in the process of setting up an office in Chicago. Andy Larson from our Los Angeles staff will be moving there and will be in charge of this effort. We are a national organization and need to organize and provide union services for people beyond California and New York. It's a big step for us, but we believe that it will pay off handsomely in the long run. Chicago is a union town, but has never had a strong union post production presence. We hope to change that.

New Office in New York

We've completed the merger of the East and West Coast health and pension plans and have brought our New York members into the much-larger West Coast plans with special modifications to meet their unique needs. This was a critical last step in our merger process and took a great deal of negotiating tenacity. We're very pleased to have moved past this final hurdle and produced a deal that is so beneficial to our East Coast members. They now enjoy much-improved pension benefits and several new health plan choices, including the retiree health plan (see Lou Bertini's article).

Now that our merger is complete, we need to address the issue of office space. In the past, our New York office was subleased from the New York plans office. The International Cinematographers Guild (Local 600) has also been involved in a merger process and their plans were combined several years ago. Their New York office now houses the East Coast extension of the West Coast plans. It makes no sense to have two New York plans offices and, as a result, the 771 plans office will disappear and with it our lease.

We've been looking for new space and have discovered that in the current New York real estate market, a 10-year lease would cost as much as the purchase of an equivalent amount of space. Of course, purchasing has many advantages over leasing and produces long-term value for the Guild. In addition, if we choose to share space with Local 600 and with the New York plans, we can save money because we would share common areas: conference rooms, reception, meeting spaces, bathrooms etc. So we are now looking for a space to purchase with the Motion Picture Plans and Local 600 as partners. We share common interests and together can find a much better space than any of the entities could alone. This will be a major step for the Guild, one which we think will produce many long-term benefits for our New York members and for the entire organization. We hope to identify a suitable space soon.