Inquirer employee union approves a three-year contract

After six months of negotiations, the NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia and The Philadelphia Inquirer have agreed on a new three-year contract, which includes pay raises, a significant increase in paid parental leave, and additional paid sick time.

The new contract, which takes effect Friday, also codifies hiring procedures already in place that are intended to advance the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion goals.

“This agreement is the best contract we’ve had in the more than 20 years I’ve been a Guild officer,” said Guild president Diane Mastrull.

The NewsGuild, which represents 257 Inquirer employees, voted on the contract Thursday, with a majority of 194 voting members approving the tentative agreement.

“We are pleased that we have reached a three-year collective bargaining agreement with the NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia,” Inquirer publisher and CEO Lisa Hughes said. “The contract includes improvements in the areas of both wages and benefits and is a reflection of The Inquirer’s best effort to invest in our most valued resource — our employees.

Full-time Guild employees will receive a one-time payment equal to 6% of their regular pay within 30 days of ratification.

Members will also receive salary raises in years two and three of the contract, which vary by annual salary level in order to begin addressing pay disparities within the staff. In each of the two years, members who make $80,000 or less will get a 4.3% raise, those who make $80,000 to $100,000 will receive a 4% raise, and those who make $100,000 or more will get a 3% raise.

“This is the second consecutive contract with raises following 10 years of pay cuts and unpaid furloughs,” Mastrull said. “We are a union that has made many sacrifices to help this company survive and continue to serve the Philly region.”

Paid parental leave for Guild members will increase to 15 weeks, plus five paid transition days off to be used within the first month of returning to work. The previous contract provided six weeks of paid parental leave.

“It’s an important signal to employees that this company recognizes that their families matter,” Mastrull said. “Employees that are respected are really productive and happy employees in the end, and so I think the company can only benefit from this.”

The agreement also allows for some nonunion managers to do limited amounts of work that would normally be done by Guild members. Mastrull said this issue arose from a couple of cases already being discussed by the union that were ready to go to arbitration. The union instead chose to settle them at the bargaining table.

“It was the most contentious of the issues throughout these six months of bargaining,” Mastrull said. Paramount for the Guild, she said, was protecting union members from repercussions based on managers doing work not permitted under previous contracts.

The hiring procedures outlined in the contract state that the company’s goal is to increase diversity in its staff and requires that candidate pools for hiring include diverse candidates. The company must also provide data on job applicants, merit raises, and representation progress with the Guild, and perform a formal pay-equity review.

“That’s a major step forward from what we had here at the Inquirer for a long, long time, in a place that was viewed as very, very white, and quite frankly, very, very male,” Mastrull said. But, she added, “we have lots more work to do to truly become a company that is diverse, inclusive, and equal.”

The contract includes a home office expense payment of $500 per year, two additional fully paid sick days for a total of eight, and 401(K) employer matching after six months instead of one year.

“Congratulations to the Guild, its leaders and members, and Inquirer management for working together to reach an agreement,” Hughes said. “We thank the Guild leadership for their professionalism and collegiality during this process.”

The deal comes in Philadelphia as across the state at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh have been on strike since October and without a contract since 2017. The Post-Gazette’s executive editor is Stan Wischnowski, who was a longtime editor at The Inquirer and a prior member of The Inquirer’s negotiating team.

“It is a sobering time in this industry, with our Guild friends in Pittsburgh on strike more than 10 months now,” Mastrull said. “That is something that I wanted to avoid here.”