BIG BROTHER AMONG A HOST OF CLASSIFIED CONCERNS

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

By JACKIE KUMA

Revenues falling. Lines of advertising diminishing. Call volumes going down. Advertising is not what it used to be!

What’s the reason? The impression we get from our management team is, it’s all OUR fault.

We take too many sick days. We make too many personal calls. We show up late and take too much time on break. Do we ever do anything right? Don’t hold your breath waiting for any praise. Finger-pointing and assigning blame is more management’s style.

In the past, problems usually were resolved by staff and management working together. Now, grievances go unresolved for months, while management steers every big discussion toward our poor attendance, our tardiness, etc. Sick time became a big issue; stewards were shown list of employee sick days going back to 1999, with "excessive" numbers of sick days pointed out. One manager even told a couple of stewards that he thought another staffer was lying about having a doctor’s appointment on a Friday. Respect? We get none!

"It’s been very frustrating," said Bev Gniewecki, chief steward in Classified. "We can’t deal with management in the traditional way. They treat us like a bunch of misbehaving school children.

"Stewards were meeting almost daily with aggrieved staffers. We decided it was time for all of us—as Guild members—to speak."

Staffers spoke by wearing their Guild shirts, or another blue shirt, on the last Friday of the month, the traditional "casual dress" day, and by wearing red shirts on another day shortly thereafter.
Management likes to pretend this sort of thing doesn’t rattle them, but sometimes the mask slips a bit. The day we wore red shirts, our newest supervisor issued a memo telling his staff that their T-shirts were unprofessional and too informal for the workplace (it even said we needed to show respect for our co-workers—a nice bit of irony!).

The best was yet to come. This past summer, we learned that management had purchased a new pie chart software program called CenterVu, which breaks down lost-call ratios, time spent on and off the phone, and so on. After some prodding by the Guild, they agreed to show us how the program works. The word "pie" began to take on a new and ominous meaning.

CenterVu shows the exact number of minutes each staffer spends on work-related or non-work-related activities. According to the company, CenterVu will be used to adjust staffing schedules. However, in the presentations, supervisors told staffers that the total amount of time we should be spending on non-work activities is 60 minutes per day: 30 minutes for lunch and two 15-minute breaks. And calls of nature? Somehow, that wasn’t in the equation.

"They’re focused on how long you’ve been in the john, as opposed to what our product does for the advertiser," said Sina Williams, VP for Mobilization and Communication.

Years ago, we had a larger phone staff (40-plus people) and many more calls (1,000-plus per day at peak times), yet our supervisors could adjust staffing levels using much simpler technology. The company also aggressively promoted the classified section. Does anyone think these factors are unrelated?

With this in mind, we couldn’t let CenterVu pass without response. We first tacked up colored pie charts on our cubicle walls, just to let management know we were taking their pie charts seriously. Next, we brought in balloons marked with the mathematical symbol ‘pi’ and tied them to our workspaces. The classified "call center" was a sea of bright yellow balloons.

In mid-August, Classified employees presented a signed petition to management asking that outstanding grievances be settled, that our supervisors be brought up to speed on policy and procedures, and that the phone staff be treated with the professional respect that we have earned. By the end of that month, we saw some encouraging signs: classified stewards had met with News executive Dan Farberman and some of the grievances were much closer to settlement. Well., it’s a start.

Many issues remain. When is management going to do something proactive instead of finding fault? For example, in past years, w had radio commercials promoting the classified section. All that our new management team has come up with so far is "Free Thrifty Ads," which is neither innovative nor revenue-generating. Is that the best they can do? Where’s the game plan to get our advertisers back from our competition?

We don’t think we’re asking for too much. Timely handling of grievances. Fair and attainable incentive plans. Training of supervisors so they can better assist staff and customers. Active promotion of the classified section, with the goal of increasing revenue. A little positive reinforcement. And most important, respect for our knowledge, our professional skills and our accomplishments. If it’s not forthcoming, well, stay tuned: that’s what mobilization is all about.

"You can bargain all you want," Williams said, "but unless you exert pressure, you don’t get change."