Milwaukee Guild Ratifies MOA
September 2017 – Members of the Milwaukee Guild ratified a Memorandum of Agreement in July that permits the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS) to use content generated by a suburban weekly, Community News (CN), and awards union representation of CN employees to the Guild. Prior to the agreement, CN employees were not represented by a union.
The agreement evolved from contract negotiations between the Guild and MJS management, which began earlier this year. Employer representatives submitted a proposal to allow MJS to use CN content, which was prohibited under the previous contract. Gannett owns both publications and 13 other community newspapers, most of them weeklies, in the Milwaukee suburbs. Gannett plans to reorganize the papers into seven publications covering larger zones.
The employer’s proposal included the caveat that CN employees would not earn Milwaukee-level salaries, which Gannett officials attempted to justify by describing the CN employees as younger and less experienced. The average wage for CN employees is $28,776; the scale for MJS journalists starts at $41,600. (How’s that for an example of the value of union membership?)
While Guild leaders were pleased by the prospect of representing CN employees, they had serious concerns: They didn’t want to create a two-tier wage scale for employees doing the same type of work. In addition, they wanted to prevent the employer from replacing employees in the MJS bargaining unit with lower-paid CN employees. To address these concerns, the Guild insisted that if the CN journalists were to remain on a different pay scale, they would also have to have different duties and job titles.
Given Gannett’s business model of consolidation, union negotiators believed management’s desire to use CN content could lead to impasse. They decided it would be better for both MJS workers and CN workers if the Guild represented the CN journalists; had jurisdiction over their work, and had some input on how it’s done.
The Memorandum of Agreement stipulates that, “It is understood that it is not the intent of the company to use CN employees to replace MJS employees.”
The current terms and conditions of employment for MJS and CN employees will remain separate until a new contract is reached. Separate CN job classifications, wages, and other terms and conditions of employment, will be addressed during bargaining for a new