Consumer Reports employees voting on new contract

Consumer Reports employees are voting Thursday on whether to ratify a new agreement between the personal finance magazine and the Newspaper Guild of New York.

The new agreement, if approved, would provide for a 2.5 percent increase in wages. The old contract expired Dec. 31.

The tentative agreement that would lock in the two-year-old adjustable pension plan as a company benefit without an approval deadline.

Under the current Guild-Consumer Reports contract, the pension plan, known within the company as the CR Adjustable Retirement Plan, would have converted to a 401(k) plan on March 15, unless the Internal Revenue Service approves it before then by issuing a favorable letter of determination.

While there is every reason to expect the IRS will approve the plan, since it approved a nearly identical one at The New York Times last summer, the agency is highly unlikely to act before the March 15 deadline.

Under the new agreement, however, the company will reduce its contribution to the pension plan from the 6 percent of base pay that it had been paying for the past two years to 5 percent of base pay, with the remaining 1 percent to be given to employees in the form a non-matching company contribution to their 401(k) accounts.

The new agreement would expire Dec. 31, 2015.