The Los Angeles Times Guild and management have struck a long-awaited tentative deal, ending a tense, three-year bargaining standoff and heading off a looming strike, TheWrap has learned.
The Los Angeles Times Guild informed members Friday that they had come to an agreement with management on “all outstanding issues in the contract,” according to a Status report. Though guild chief Matt Hamilton was not completely satisfied by the agreement, he told members that this was the furthest they could push management to meet their needs.
“We have a tentative agreement with the company that follows more than three years of bargaining,” Hamilton told TheWrap. “The contract will be put for ratification vote on Nov. 30 to Dec. 2, and we meet with our members on Monday afternoon to discuss the particulars and answer questions they may have.”
“This is not the contract we wanted after three years of bargaining, but it is the deal we have,” Hamilton wrote in an email to members Friday obtained by TheWrap. “We came to it after extensive negotiations and internal deliberation, including our historic 85% strike vote. After a nearly 24-hour long bargaining session, we went back to the table again Thursday. Management signaled they were at the end of the line.”
Management did not budge on the percentage of skips in a layoffs based on seniority. The paper will continue to skip 20% of a “layoff cluster.” They also will accrue universal skips of 15% that they could apply to any department, according to messaging from the guild.
The company did not make a change to its pay increase structure from last session. They did agree to hire hire three assistant editors to account for its elimination of the position with the first job listing posting within a week of the contract’s ratification.
The agreement follows a historic union vote in which 85% of members voted to authorize a strike in hopes of reaching a new contract. This was the first strike authorized by the guild, which was formed in 2018. The October vote followed years of bargaining for a cost-of-living increase, layoff protections and work being outsourced to third-parties.
During the time the union has been bargaining for a new contract, the L.A. Times has gone through several rounds of layoffs, cutting the number of union members from 450 to 200. The Local of the Media Guild of the West represents more than 200 reporters at the paper, and 98% participated in the vote.
LA Times Union Authorizes Strike by 85%