NY Guild invokes Bloomberg in TR contract dispute

The Newspaper Guild of New York, which represents some Thomson Reuters employees, has recorded a radio spot to be aired on stations WINS and WCBS AM asking listeners to complain to Bloomberg, founder and owner of Thomson Reuters' main rival financial information business.

The 30-second spot says: "Media giant Thomson Reuters was supposed to create hundreds of new jobs to get $26 million dollars in New York tax breaks. But now the company is cutting pay and benefits for hundreds of its employees." It asks why a foreign company should get tax breaks in tough times and says voters ought to call the mayor's office to protest.

The union says Thomson Reuters has asked New York City’s Independent Development Agency to divert an unspecified, unused portion of the $26 million it received in 1998 to seven leased Manhattan locations. The tax breaks were given to Reuters to persuade it to build its US headquarters at 3 Times Square ten years before the 2008 takeover by Thomson and were intended to spur job creation. The Guild lists ten reasons why the company’s request should be denied.

Among those reasons are that the company does not need the money. "Unlike New York City and State right now, Thomson Reuters is a healthy, profitable company."

Also, says the union, Reuters has moved hundreds of jobs out of the city to other US and Canadian locations and covers Wall Street from Bangalore, India. Instead of beefing up its New York-based financial reporting team, says the Guild, the company created more than 100 reporting jobs in Bangalore where it has said wages are one-fourth to one-sixth of those in New York. Most of the Bangalore journalists report on US-based companies and, recently, US commodity markets, the Guild said.

Guild president Bill O’Meara said the purpose of the tax subsidies was to encourage good employers to stay in New York and provide good jobs for the people who live there. “By cutting the compensation of our members and shipping good jobs out of the city, the company has been anything but a good employer deserving of scarce public resources at this difficult economic time.”

Earlier this year the union filed a complaint with the US National Labor Relations Board accusing Thomson Reuters of planning to cut wages of reporters and other employees by an average of 10 per cent this year without Guild consent. Thomson Reuters disputed the figure, saying it was guaranteeing a 0.5 per cent increase for the 400-plus US journalists represented by the union at Reuters News. Some would get bigger raises.

The New York Daily News on Monday quoted Thomson Reuters spokeswoman Courtney Dolan saying: “Since October 2008 the Newspaper Guild of NY, which represents approximately 440 employees out of more than 3,700 Thomson Reuters employees in NYC, has refused to put a single, comprehensive offer on the table. As a result, Reuters declared an impasse in January 2010 in accordance with applicable law. Reuters stands behind its position and is committed to moving the organization forward. We look forward to the day when the Guild directs its efforts to returning to the bargaining table with a meaningful counterproposal to our best offer instead of creating misleading videos and radio ads.“ ■