NABET-CWA Local 59051: KOIN/Nexstar - Bargaining Bulletin #55

NABET-CWA Local 59051 is thrilled to announce that after 7 1/2 years of intense and complex bargaining, an overall Tentative Agreement has been reached with KOIN/Nexstar in Portland, OR. The ratification process will conclude on January 3rd.

Congratulations to the Local 59051 Officers, the bargaining committee, and most importantly, the KOIN/NABET-CWA members!!  - C. Braico

NABET - KOIN

BARGAINING BULLETIN
Bulletin #55
December 17, 2024

Dear KOIN NABET-CWA Members,

After 7 ½ years of bargaining, and 2 ½ years since the contract rejection of August 2022, we are happy to announce that we have reached a tentative agreement. No, it is not everything that we wanted but we have resolved many of the issues, significantly improved the base wages, locked in your health care premiums, and achieved base wage increases. But realistically, we were looking at the option of taking a strike authorization vote (and knowing that if that was not overwhelmingly a YES, we would have even less bargaining power). So, we are bringing this offer back to you for a vote.

Voting Mechanics:
We will be voting electronically, so each member of the bargaining unit will receive an email from Ballotpoint (our outside vendor who handles these votes) our plan is to have voting from Friday December 20th at 12 noon through Friday January 3rd at 9am. This is a secret ballot vote, and no one will know how you vote. A majority of those voting must vote to accept the contract for it to be ratified. If you vote early in the process, and then change your mind, you may go back and change your vote. ONLY the Final vote cast will count. We will release the outcome of the vote on Friday January 3rd before noon.

What is in it?
We locked in the raises that we had been bargaining back and for over for the increases in the Minimum Rates (Article 24), we added new steps. Previously there were 2 steps (0-6 months and 6 months and over). We have added 3–7-year steps to most rates and 7 years and over to all rates. In recognition that some people are currently paid over the top rate of the 7+ year step for their work, they will receive a $1 per hour increase.

Then all members will receive a 1.5% increase effective on ratification, and an additional 1.25% increase on April 1, 2026. The contract is for 2 years – so assuming ratification on January 3rd it will run until March 31st, 2027.

All members will receive a $500 signing bonus (these are the funds the Union demanded in 2018 when the Trump 1.0 tax cuts benefited corporations and specifically Nexstar.

Health care was a big part of this fight, as your rates have been locked-in since 2016, those rates will go up no more than 10% above those rates and again be locked in for the duration of the contract. While many of you had been looking at $200 per month rate increases under a move the Nexstar plans, now those rates have been negotiated and the most a person with family coverage will see as an increase is $40 per month. Many will see only slight changes in the premiums (up or down just a little). And the rates are locked in for the term of the contract.

The other changes that we have made in the contract language will still be there, like additional 2 holidays since we moved to the Nexstar Handbook for holidays (Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth). We are going through a redline draft of the contract with all the changes in it and when that is done (later this week) it will be released to you for study before you vote.

So Why Now?
We started this fight in June of 2017, it has been seven ½ years since we started. We have fought at the NLRB, and in the Federal Courts. We remain under the decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals enforcing our NLRB win from 2022. We recognize that an order to bargain gets them to the table, but it doesn’t mean that they have to agree with us or provide all the money we know that you are worth. But we have argued, and poked and prodded and mobilizing is part of the CWA model of how to get to a contract, and we were concerned that even a strike (which might not have had full membership engagement) would not improve these offers over where we had bargained them.

We recognize that the NLRB will be under new leadership on January 20th, and we felt that the deal we were able to push for now was probably going to be the best we might be able to accomplish without a strike.

Why are you recommending this offer? 
In bargaining sometimes, you can get a little more with the promise to recommend an offer, and in this case, we got them from 1.25% on ratification to 1.5% and from 1% to 1.25% on April 1, 2026. Then we got the money from 50¢ an hour to those over scale to $1 per hour.

Finally, we got agreement that all four of the Commercial Production folks who work on the CW people would be included in the bargaining unit (and covered by this settlement). And with that, we agreed to bring this offer back and recommend it to you for ratification.

In Conclusion:
Thank you to all who mobilized, came to bargaining, talked to us about options and worked under these very difficult conditions. We want to get you under contract, see you getting raises and be able to enforce violations of contract provisions. We will again be able to file grievances and will continue to be able to represent you in disciplinary meetings (remember you have 3 union officers – Robert Dingwall, Adam Worthington, and Neil Sparks – who can represent you in a disciplinary meeting – but you must ask for them!

In Solidarity,

Robert Dingwall 
Carrie Biggs-Adams