Find these stories and photos in a double-page spread in the current Guild Reporter.

It took more than 20 months of caustic bargaining for the New York Times Guild unit to move the company off its most draconian proposals and reach an agreement.

Notwithstanding the 521-64 vote to ratify, bitterness toward Times’ management lives on.

Guild members have not forgotten that at the end of 2010, former New York Times CEO Janet Robinson walked away from her job with an estimated $21 million severance package.

At virtually the same time, the company showed up for bargaining with a let-them-eat-cake attitude toward its workers.

Their hard feelings are personal, directed at Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger and the management team that set out to freeze Guild members’ wages and pensions.

“Don’t be fooled by the Times’ liberal image,” New York Guild President Bill O’Meara told CWA members during a town hall phone call after the ratification. “Their high-paid lawyers came to the table with a 51-page proposal filled with massive givebacks.”

Despite that, the Guild managed to bargain, “a damn good settlement,” O’Meara said.

“We saved a defined benefit pension plan, we negotiated an incentive bonus program on top of a 2 percent wage increase, we prevented members from having to divert any more of their wages to the medical plan,” he said. “In the context of where the industry is, we accomplished an awful lot.”

A private mediator, proposed by the Guild, helped turn the corner at the bargaining table. But most important was a membership more active than it had been in decades.

“Our negotiating committee brought back a deal far, far better than what the company believed could be bullied onto an historically complacent newsroom,” business reporter Jim Dwyer said in an email, commending the Guild team’s “doggedness, backed up by an engaged and angry newsroom.”

In fact, the mobilization effort was unlike anything seen at the New York Times since the city’s newspaper strike in the early 1960s. Years of union apathy in the newsroom gave way to videos with personal appeals to readers, to group letters to Sulzberger, and, in early 2012, the first major newsroom action: at least 200 members standing in silent protest outside the editors’ 4 p.m. news meeting. Many held copies of the Times with the stories covered up, driving home the Guild’s campaign theme: “Without Us, It’s Just White Space.”

Together, members from the news and business sides leafleted the Sulzbergers’ shareholders meeting, they wore stickers of support for the Guild, they staged an afternoon walkout, and more. Virtually everything they did got attention in the world’s media capital.

“In the 25 years I’ve been here, the most anyone had ever done was wear a sticker,” said Grant Glickson, a paginator who chaired the Guild’s mobilization committee.

He talked to reporter Donald McNeil, one of relatively few people who showed up for early meetings about negotiations. Beginning with an email list for members to vent and ask questions, McNeil helped turn a complacent newsroom into one of the Guild’s most active.

“After a while, it became easier and easier to get people involved,” Glickson said. “It started to become second nature.”

At mid-afternoon on Monday, Oct. 10, nearly 400 staffers walked out of the Times’ building en masse. “I thought we’d have maybe 150 people,” Glickson said, still amazed at the turnout on a holiday — Columbus Day — that many members had taken off because school was out.

Other actions never made it past a planning stage, notably a byline strike and leafleting advertisers. McNeil, who ultimately voted “no” on the contract, believes the union could have accomplished more by holding out and taking bolder action.

Glickson wonders about that, too. He shares members’ disappointment with the raises, and agrees with McNeil that the overwhelmingly “yes” vote doesn’t fully reflect members’ feelings. He thinks some voted in favor to show appreciation for the bargaining committee’s hard work.

“I have a feeling that some people wanted to vote ‘no’ but they didn’t want to vote against us, they didn’t want to insult us,” he said.”

“With all respect to my friends saying no, I say yes. Not because it’s a good deal, but because it is a deal we can live with in a time of diminished expectations in this industry and across the country,” national correspondent John Schwartz wrote on a newsroom email thread before the vote.

O’Meara said he’s had many members thank him for a job well done without expressing the anger reflected in other emails. He said there seems to be a new sense of solidarity in the unit.

“It took a long time to get people to wake up, but now they’re committed to not being asleep before the next contract talks,” O’Meara said. “They’re planning to maintain the mobilization committee and have it meet monthly so that we’re more than prepared for the next round of bargaining.”

NewsGuild President Bernie Lunzer said he’s proud of what the union accomplished, at the bargaining table and beyond.

“As a union we are in a much stronger position at the New York Times than we were 20 months ago,” Lunzer said. “ The Times knows now that our members aren’t afraid to be activists, and that the efforts they undertook over the past year are just the beginning. If we keep building on that, imagine the strength the Times will face at the table three years from now.”

In Their Own Words

A PROBABLE YES VOTE:

Two things seem clear.

1. Our negotiators did a heroic job in getting a much better deal than management wanted to come up with and deserve our praise and thanks for their incredibly hard work.

2. Said deal is still disappointing and perhaps insulting, and we’d all like a better one.

What’s not clear to me is whether there is any realistic hope of getting a better one, how that would come about, and whether it makes any sense to face the real and onerous risks of a strike, if it comes to that. I’m willing to listen, but unless I’m convinced a “no” vote would be more than a brave but likely fruitless and damaging statement of principle, I’m inclined to vote yes. Either way, sincere thanks to all who’ve posted yay and nay for their smart and helpful thoughts.

Peter Applebome (“Our Towns” columnist)

A No Vote

Subject:         Sacrifice

People — forgive me for the melodrama but I’m sitting in a car driving through the desert in Chad and I have some time to ruminate about this.

Anthony Shadid died while covering a story.

Joao Silva got his legs blown off on assignment.

Several local employees of the Baghdad bureau were assassinated for the work they were doing for us.

Enough is enough. We all make HUGE sacrifices for this company. If there is enough cash in the system for Janet to walk away with millions, there is enough to pay us fairly.

By voting no, we send that message loud and clear.

Jeffrey Gettleman (2012 Pulitzer winner for international reporting)

There are a couple reasons I’m going to vote for the deal tomorrow, even though I agree with Donald, Jim and Matt that it’s not so sweet.

A majority of the negotiating committee members apparently support it, otherwise we would not be at this point. I wasn’t there at the negotiating table so I have to defer to the overall judgment of the group.

I think there’s a good chance things will get ugly if we don’t take the deal, and I don’t sense the will among the members to go to battle. If that sounds like fear talking, call me a coward, a wimp, a chicken.

Peace

Stephanie Saul (investigative reporter)

Subject:         A No Vote, Based on the Math

After propelling The New York Times to industry-leader in the digital age, you do not deserve lower pay and reduced retirement security.

I will vote against ratification today because, in real-dollar terms, the deal offered to us represents a serious cut in wages and benefits at a time when The New York Times Company remains profitable and everyone is working harder.

…But forget about us, for a moment. Many of us care as much, if not more, about the Times as an institution. For this reason, I was among those who urged a “cost-neutral” deal that would reflect the current challenges in the news business while not contributing to the dishonest defeatism of Company negotiators who described us as retrograde widget-makers in a dying industry.

The Company certainly has the money to reach such a fair deal. So far, it is simply unwilling to spend that money on the journalists whose work makes the Times so valuable to our readers.

This is not a deal that will help recruit and retain talent. This is not a deal that even represents shared sacrifice. It represents a sinister shift in priorities that increasingly seems to direct more resources to the corporate suites than to the newsroom.

On the math, it’s easy to vote no.

I salute and thank our valiant — and rightfully exhausted — negotiators and Guild leaders.

David Herszenhorn (Moscow-based international reporter)

Subject:         Vote NO

I’m deeply grateful to members of the negotiating committee for their dedicated work through a grueling and demeaning process. Their commitment at the negotiating table wrung some significant concessions at a time when the company — let’s be honest — has not been bargaining in good faith.

Still, because of management’s intransigence, the contract proposal before us doesn’t even come close to being fair or reasonable….

From the very beginning of the bargaining process, it’s been clear that the Times’ negotiating strategy was calculated to take advantage of the newsroom’s loyalty and leverage its fears.

When the business was tanking and the company in peril a few years ago most of us voted to voluntarily sacrifice 5 percent of our pay because we care about the institution and its mission. Now that our work has helped make The Times profitable and flush with cash, management is repaying that loyalty with insults at the bargaining table and an insulting contract offer.

They’re betting that the disruption and uncertainty in the business has left us with residual Stockholm Syndrome so that we’ll be too cowed to stand up for ourselves…..that their threats of impasse will make us cave and, once again, negotiate against ourselves.

At the risk of sounding like someone who’s spent way too many hours in hockey locker rooms: If someone’s going to plunder tens of thousands of dollars from my family, they’re going to have to pry the money out of my bank account — I’m certainly not going to vote to hand it to them.

David Kocieniewski (2012 Pulitzer winner for explanatory reporting)

…Once, companies like The Times had to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in printing plants, in trucks, even in forests to produce their product and make sure it got to the readers on time. Now, we write, photograph, illustrate and edit the news; we print it; we deliver it with a push of the button. We protect the building. We sell the ads.

Paid circulation is up 40% over last year.

Had Arthur Sulzberger said to almost any of us, the company needs money, he would not have had to finish the sentence, and it would have been his.

…Over the last months, I’ve been privileged to add my name to letters signed by hundreds of my esteemed colleagues, saying that we would not settle for anything less than fair wages and benefits. That remains my position. It is why I am voting no. We can do better, and so can The New York Times. Believe it.

Vote.

In solidarity,

Jim Dwyer (business reporter)

I feel compelled to weigh in, as a tide of skepticism begins to dominate this email thread. A bit of bio: I am the proud son of two union parents, whose benefits made a big difference in my life.

— I’ve never expected to have a pension by retirement. Maybe I’ve covered too many cheap retail companies, or watched our fellow journalists at rival media companies lose theirs entirely. Now, I am told that our negotiating team has secured us a reasonable, solid alternative. I am impressed.

— I have become accustomed to no raises, zilch — in fact, we have given money back to this company. Now, I am told we do have raises for the next few years. Sure, they are modest. But they are raises in an economy where raises are hard to come by.

Those are serious upsides.

Yes, there are downsides, too. But the real downside — and I don’t hear enough people talking about it if we vote against this contract — likely involves work stoppages and strikes. Those would exact their own very steep cost, not just in dollars.

This is a shaky time in a shaky industry.

Michael Barbaro (political reporter)

I very much appreciate the careful and thoughtful words of Jim Dwyer and David Herszenhorn. They and others raise many sensible objections to the contract, and add a useful soupcon of anger at the New York Times treatment of its employees.

And I join with them in urging everyone, adamant opponents and those in favor of this contract, to vote. It’s our right, earned over lots of hard years, and we should make our voices heard.

But, in the end, I disagree with them…

…To believe that we can reject this contract, write a few more nice letters to Arthur, walk back to the table and with steely stares obtain a better settlement strikes me as a delusion. And, with respect, too many of our members rely on this contract to argue that grander principles take precedent; we need to weigh consequences.

I hope it doesn’t come to that; I hope you see what is defensible in this contract (particularly when compared to contracts across the industry and across the country) and vote yes.

But above all, catcalls or applause, please vote.

Best

Michael Powell (reporter, “City Room” blogger)

I realize that no one is elated about the deal, and that many understandably feel a desire to vote no — if only to tell Arthur and the rest of management how dismayed we are that they are not being more generous in compensating us for our hard and excellent work.

But the real question now is whether voting no will render us better off or worse off. If Guild members vote down the deal, the Guild may somehow manage to pressure Arthur and senior management to be more generous. Or Arthur and senior management may just dig in and say, we already gave you the best deal we could afford. And very possibly the company could come back and impose a worse “last, best and final offer” that may very well remove the 3% lump sum “signing bonus” that’s part of the current package.

…Lastly, thanks for all the kind words for members of the negotiating committee. We pushed as hard as we could.

Best,

Steve Greenhouse (labor reporter)