Lionbridge's answers to our information request before the third bargaining meeting

Find below the answers provided on January 7 by Jeanne Schreuder to the questions we had sent in an information request before the third collective bargaining meeting. We have have added two short comments at the bottom.

Hi Philippe,

Thank you for reaching out to me.  I have provided responses to your 5 requests below.

1.       The union requests access to the contract signed between Lionbridge and Microsoft that determines the terms and conditions of employment and work in the lab. 

This question appears to rest on a factual error.  The contract between Lionbridge and Microsoft does not determine the terms and conditions of  employment for the employees in this bargaining unit.  Lionbridge determines those terms and conditions of employment.  Lionbridge’s contract with Microsoft is not relevant to the wages, terms and conditions of employment for bargaining unit employees, and is highly competitively confidential.  We respectfully decline to provide it.

2.       The union requests a list of the employees who opted for the health insurance plan offered by Lionbridge and a list of those who did not choose this plan (please no social security data included).

The requested information will be provided by Wednesday, January 14, 2015

3.       The union requests a list of the employees who worked overtime (more than 40 hours) during the last two weeks (December 22 to December 27, December 29 to January 3rd)

The requested information will be provided by Wednesday, January 14, 2015

4.       Concerning the employees Lionbridge classifies as Tier1s while they receive benefits other Tier1s don't, the union requests information about what those benefits exactly are, when those benefits were awarded and what was the status (Tier1 or Tier2) of those employees when they were awarded.

The requested information will be provided by Wednesday, January 14, 2015

5. The union requests the following information:

- the total annual compensation of Lionbridge's CEO

The requested information will be provided by Wednesday, January 14, 2015

- the median of the annual total compensation of Lionbridge's employees

This request seeks information pertaining to employees who are not part of the bargaining unit represented by the union .  As such, the law recognizes that this information is presumptively relevant.  Please identify the relevance of the requested information.  Please note that your response must identify the relevance with particularity; a generalized assertion that it is needed for bargaining is insufficient.  When you identify the particular relevance of this requested information, please identify how information pertaining to the compensation of non-bargaining unit employees, without any regard for their skills, experience, training, location, education, jobs, or the other myriad factors that enter into compensation, is relevant to the compensation of employees in this bargaining unit.

- the ratio to the compensation of the CEO to the median compensation of employees

Because this information response is derivative of the request before, Lionbridge cannot response.

Thank you for sending the updated draft proposal. 

Jeanne

Since the questions about our CEO's compensation seemed so irritating we did a little research and here are our approximate calculations as there are various ways to compute the CEO's compensation.

Lionbridge CE) Rory Cowan's 2013 compensation according to Business Week or Forbes 

Salary: $713.076

Options: 1.129.935 

Total depends what is included 

Total annual cash: 1.545.365 or including long term options: $3.025.365

by comparison in 2013, at $22 per hour my compensation was:

$ 45.399 (with $874 of overtime)

at $17 per hour, without overtime and on a basis of 160 hours per month the total annual compensation (before any deduction) is $32.640

so the ratio is: 

a salary of $713.000 is 15 times a salary of $ 45.000 and 21 times a salary of $32.640

a compensation of $1.545.365 is 34 times a salary of $45.000 and 47 times a salary of $32.640

a compensation of $3.025.365 is 67 times a salary of $45.000 and 92 times a salary of $32.640.

And as for their answer to our first question concerning the contract with Microsoft we think it is highly disputable but we'll not go into the details now.