US union contests discipline of Reuters journalists

The Guild, which represents more than 400 Reuters editorial staff in the United States, demanded hearings for each disciplinary case, the first of 29 to make their way through the system, all of which have been challenged by the Guild in the grievance process and rejected by management.

The 18 arbitration demands are the most ever to be filed at once against Reuters or any other employer with which the Guild deals. They are in addition to six pending cases on other disputes. “Grievances on at least seven more individual cases of discipline, as well as a general challenge to the way management has carried its disciplinary assault, are also pending and will become eligible for arbitration by July, if management rejects them. Four cases will not go to arbitration because the employees decided to leave the company under terms that permit the Guild to report only that an amicable deal was reached.

“This isn’t a story about a union defending dead wood,” said Guild secretary-treasurer Peter Szekely, a Reuters journalist for three decades until 2007. “It’s about challenging a management offensive that not only violates our contract, but has unfairly singled out a group of predominant veteran journalists for undeserved discipline, leaving dozens of distinguished careers blemished or finished.”

The 18 employees whose cases are being challenged are among 29 journalists and support staff, each of whom received a Performance Improvement Plan that alleged performance deficiencies and contained disciplinary language, as well as separate verbal warnings, since April.

The Guild said it was aware of “an outbreak of disciplinary PIPs against Reuters journalists in some European and Asian countries, including some where employees are not protected by unions”. At least one employee was terminated.

“But as far as we can tell, no other region in which Reuters operates has seen a coordinated assault on journalists on as grand a scale as we’ve had in the United States, where the recently installed top Editorial managers are based, where they have focused much of their recruiting efforts and where they spent their journalistic careers.”

The Guild said the disciplinary assault against US-based journalists targeted mostly older, longer serving journalists – 16 of the 18 whose cases the Guild is challenging are over 40. ■