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Benefits December 15, 2010
AP Staff Protesting Pension Freeze
December 15, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Hundreds of journalists at The Associated Press are taking part in a national “byline boycott” and are signing a petition protesting proposed cuts at the news cooperative.
Reported by Rebecca Moore
The petition asks AP management to reconsider a pension plan freeze and increases in medical payments by more than 40%, according to a union press release. The News Media Guild says the proposal would undermine retirement security for almost all workers.
AP also wants workers to absorb $1 million in medical plan costs even though workers adopted cost-savings measures two years ago. The union claims AP said it can afford to absorb the increase – it “just doesn’t want to.”
About 1,200 AP employees in the U.S. are represented by the News Media Guild, a local of The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America. The current two-year contract expired November 30.