Graphic Audio First Contract Negotiations: Summary of 3/18/26

The GAU Bargaining Committee issued the following summary from Wednesday, March 18th negotiations:

● Today was the eleventh bargaining session with RB. In attendance on the Union side was Aeri, Laura, Nicolette (from GA), Tammy, Kisha, Brandon, and Lisa (from CWA). Present on the Employer side was Justin Keith (RB lawyer), Anji Cornette (GA VP GM), and Shana Jackson (RB VP HR).

● We began the day in caucus for a quick debrief before heading to the bargaining table. Our expectation was to receive whatever the Company would pass across the table in the first meeting and then to ask any clarifying questions after a brief caucus.

● In the first table meet of the day, Justin presented GA-RB’s counter to CWA’s V1.0 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). The counter was presented in a completely different format than what the union passed across the table. This meant that all changes shown between the CWA MOA original and this new document version were neither thorough nor accurate. This has been the behavior for every proposal we have passed. For this reason, the GAU-CWA bargaining team chose to only ask immediate clarifying questions so we may return to caucus for a closer look at what was truly different between the two documents.
     ○ GA-RB COUNTER 1.0 – MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT
          ■ While there were middle grounds mentioned on the content of some benefits, there was still some discussion that needed to be countered in the numbers associated with those benefits, like lengths of time, clarification of percentages and how those would be applied to severance calculations, etc… We also need to bargain more on the recall procedure.

● We left the table to rejoin for a caucus, where we identified portions of the new GA-RB MOA document and how Justin’s explanations required further clarification for us to understand the Company’s reasoning behind some of the language.

● We met back at the table to pass our clarifying questions which were answered by Justin and Shana. Before we left the table, Lisa once again tried to impress upon Justin the need for our layoff RFI to be returned to us with all answers completed. Justin again deflected by asking the Union to prioritize any questions that needed answering in order for us to pass a counter today. He further clarified that we were only bargaining over the effects of this impacted group of employees so if there is anything that the Company overlooked and have not provided then the Company is not asking the Union to waive their right to pursue. Furthermore, any questions that he responded with a request for the Union to provide relevance would require the Union to provide relevancy to NLRB to protect the identities of executives that made this layoff decision both in Graphic Audio and RBMedia.

● We left the table and rejoined in a caucus, where we moved to work on joining the GA-RB MOA 1.0 counter with the CWA V2.0 Memorandum of Agreement counter. During this time, Lisa and Brandon had a sidebar with Justin to request more time to draft counters. Upon return from the sidebar, Lisa encouraged the bargaining team to present the partially complete CWA V2.0 MOA counter to show the GA-RB team that we are making significant progress even if we are not finished with the entire counter.

● In the table meet, Lisa presented our counter, CWA PARTIAL V2.0 - MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT, to provide the movement we were able to make. Shana and Justin both asked and answered questions throughout the presentation of this document. Before we left the table for the day, Justin and Lisa scheduled a Thursday sidebar and the start time of the Friday bargaining session.

● We met for a final caucus of the day to designate those attending the Thursday sidebar, determine any survey work that needed to happen in preparation for the Friday bargaining session and add in the last of the GA-RB language to the CWA MOA partial V2.0 counter that we planned to pass on Friday. We ended the day prepared to continue drafting the counter for the Memorandum of Agreement and the Separation Agreement in the next bargaining prep session.