Author: Washington Baltimore News Guild

Media contacts:
Guild at Local Progress: localprogressguild@gmail.com
Kathleen Floyd, WBNG: kfloyd@wbng.org

WASHINGTON– The Guild at Local Progress is walking out today for 24 hours in response to management’s refusal to engage in reciprocal movement at the bargaining table. The Guild’s contract has been expired for more than 200 days.

Since bargaining began in February, Guild members have worked to turn staff priorities into responsive proposals, making difficult compromises along the way and reaching tentative agreements on several articles. The Guild has presented three comprehensive counter packages offering different combinations of wage increases and concessions on management priorities, including a no-strike, no-lockout provision. 

Management has repeatedly declined to match that movement. After 16 hours of bargaining in the week of August 31, management responded with counters that reversed previously communicated positions and declared its positions “fixed and final.” Its latest counterproposal offered wage increases below the Guild’s previous package, would weaken paid time off protections, and would give management more discretion to deny leave. Management has also reopened questions that were previously agreed upon around working hours while tying those changes to wages. In addition, Management has stopped meeting during work hours, a break from the ground rules both sides have followed since February, and when the Guild offered nine hours of bargaining time, management agreed to only one.

WASHINGTON – The staff of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) today request voluntary recognition of their union, NLIHC Workers United. A supermajority (96%) of workers, 28 employees, have signed union authorization cards, demonstrating their desire to be represented by the Washington-Baltimore News Guild (WBNG).

For over fifty years, NLIHC has been a leading voice for equity, integrity, and fairness – in their work, with their members and partners, and on the national stage. NLIHC is dedicated to achieving racially and socially equitable public policy that ensures people with the lowest incomes have quality homes that are accessible and affordable in communities of their choice. As workers of a mission driven, values based organization, the staff of NLIHC know “there’s nothing about us without us.” A years-long effort in the making, today they come together with the hope of advancing three major priorities – transparency, staff development and support, and collaboration – with the creation of their union. A union will give these workers a concrete mechanism to ensure shared values extend to the workforce.

Media contacts:
Kathleen Floyd, WBNG Communications: kfloyd@wbng.org
Hachette Workers Coalition: info@hachetteworkers.com

More than 600 workers at Hachette Book Group, the third-largest trade publisher in the United States, voted in a decisive victory 388-130 to unionize with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild. The newly certified Hachette Workers Coalition will now begin negotiating its first collective bargaining agreement with the company.

Hachette workers are now the largest union in trade publishing history and the second of the Big Five publishers to unionize.

This was originally posted by the Washington-Baltimore News Guild on May 15.

WASHINGTON– The ACLU of DC Staff Union has ratified a first contract, securing a landmark agreement that delivers sweeping gains in wages, benefits, job security, and workplace flexibility following voluntary recognition in May 2023. The contract stands as one of the strongest first agreements won by any union local in the region.

“We spent nearly three years at the bargaining table fighting for a contract that reflects the value of the work we do every day to protect civil liberties in the District,” said Yvonne Slosarski, bargaining committee chair. “This agreement delivers for every member of our unit, and it sets a new standard for what nonprofit workers can and should win.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contacts:
Kathleen Floyd, WBNG Communications — kfloyd@wbng.org
PEN Guild — politicoeenewsguild@gmail.com

WASHINGTON– The POLITICO and E&E News Guild (PEN Guild) members have earned a resounding final victory in one of the most significant labor-AI disputes in American journalism: following months of negotiations between PEN Guild leadership, the Washington-Baltimore News Guild (WBNG), and POLITICO management, the company has agreed to shut down both artificial intelligence products at the heart of last November’s landmark arbitration ruling.

POLITICO will shut down Capitol AI Report-Builder, a tool that produced branded policy reports for POLITICO Pro subscribers without any editorial review, despite generating glaring factual errors. It also will not revive the “Live Summaries” AI feature, which generated error-riddled unedited coverage of major political events, including the 2024 Democratic National Convention and Vice Presidential Debate. Both uses were found by an arbitrator in November 2025 to have violated PEN Guild’s collective bargaining agreement.