Reuters journalists pushing for cost-of-living raise

Ginger Adams Otis of the New York Daily News writes Wednesday about the contract negotiations between Reuters and its union-represented journalists.

Otis writes, “Instead of the fixed cost-of-living raises — usually between 3.5 and 4% annually, according to veteran reporter Steve Gorman — the company wants a system that gives managers discretion as to who gets a raise and how much it should be.

“Thomson Reuters declined to comment when contacted by the Daily News.

“But in internal documents obtained by The News, the company defended its ‘merit based’ pay system. In a June 13 email, the company said ‘the merit-based raise system enables us to reward people for exceptional performance. … It has worked well for six years, delivering millions of dollars in inflation-beating annual pay increases to most Guild employees.’

“The email also said the company had given the union an explanation of how its discretionary increases were determined and a history of how raises had been handed out in the past three years.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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tim mullaney says:
June 21, 2017 at 4:40 pm
In environment of 1.5% inflation, a proposal for a 3.5 to 4% raise needs to be called something other than a cost of living increase.Economically quite illiterate for a bunch of biz journos, and won't work. Make a case that your productivity is up 4% in nominal dollars, which I bet you can do, and you have a better chance to get someplace.