Union Says Thomson Reuters Improperly Restricted Employee Use of Twitter

A labor union has accused Thomson Reuters of illegal pay cuts, as well as improperly restricting what its employees say via Twitter.

The Newspaper Guild of New York filed the charge with the National Labor Relations Board.

The Guild says the company instituted a Twitter policy it never negotiated with the Guild, which prohibits its employees from tweeting anything "that would damage the reputation of Reuters News or Thomson Reuters." According to PR Newswire:

[a] union activist was "reminded" of the policy after responding to a senior manager's call to "join the (Twitter) conversation on making Reuters the best place to work" with a tweet that said: "One way to make this the best place to work is to deal honestly with Guild members."

Thomson Reuters disputes the Guild's illegal pay cut accusations, saying it was actually guaranteeing a minimum .5% salary hike for the Reuters News service's approximately 400 unionized journalists.