Author: News Media Guild

An impartial arbitrator ruled on Monday that Oxford University Press violated its contract with Guild members when it laid off 13 workers in 2024. The arbitrator ordered the company to resolve the issue with the News Media Guild, the NewsGuild-CWA local that represents workers at Oxford University Press. If the parties can’t agree on a remedy, the arbitrator will provide one by November. 

“The ruling is historic,” said Tony Winton, the News Media Guild’s executive director, “because it vindicates language in many NewsGuild contracts negotiated to limit offshoring and use of non-bargaining unit personnel.”

Workers first organized in 2021 and won a collective agreement in 2024. Shortly after the agreement was signed, management fired staff and transferred their work out to the United Kingdom, violating the jurisdiction article in the contract. 

The arbitrator wrote that the employer violated Article 1, Section 4 of the contract “when it laid off the 13 bargaining unit employees because of the assignment or reassignment of the protected work to non-unit employees.”

News Media Guild President Vinay Cherwoo, who labored for decades to improve the lives of generations of media workers, died Thursday after a long illness, his family said. He was 56. 

Cherwoo was a New York-based sports editor at The Associated Press, where over the course of three decades he developed an expertise and deep knowledge of many professional sports. His service to the Guild started in the 1990s, when he was elected to the union’s Executive Committee and served as a rank-and-file negotiator on many contracts with the AP.