News | The NewsGuild

Workers at InvestigateWest on a zoom call

InvestigateWest journalists form union

The journalists of InvestigateWest, a nonprofit investigative publication in the Pacific Northwest, announced plans this week to organize together as a union, the InvestigateWest Guild.

The newsroom’s reporters signaled our unanimous desire to form a union by signing a mission statement for the Guild that was sent to leadership last week, before our public announcement on Thursday. InvestigateWest executive director Jacob Fries signed an agreement for voluntary recognition Friday afternoon.

In the mission statement, we said our intention with the Guild is to preserve the impactful investigative reporting we do every day and create a fair and secure workplace for current and future reporters. We hope to achieve that by having a seat at the table.

Washingtonian Guild unanimously votes to strike

Media contacts:
Kathleen Floyd, WBNG: kfloyd@wbng.org

WASHINGTON–Workers in Washingtonian magazine’s union have unanimously approved plans to strike. Washingtonian Guild, which represents employees in the newsroom, art and digital departments, has spent over five years negotiating a contract with management.

Contract talks have snagged over management’s refusal to agree to a reasonable pay floor for employees and over a remote work policy. The Guild has proposed a minimum salary of $60,000; Washingtonian Media’s CEO, Cathy Merrill, has offered only $42,500, a sum completely inadequate for anyone living in the Washington, DC, area.

“For many of us, working at Washingtonian is a dream job, but we are constantly losing talented staffers who simply can’t afford to work here,” said Food Editor Jessica Sidman. “It’s not unusual for employees to take on side work or get financial help from family or partners just to make ends meet. Cathy’s proposed salary floor is embarrassingly below industry norms and falling further and further behind every day. Our requests are truly modest. Enough is enough—let’s get a deal done.”

Newsletter: Dressing up as management’s proposal for Halloween

NewsGuild-CWA members clocked a lot of overtime during last week’s U.S. midterm elections. (Hopefully you’re filing for it!)

Journalists in 330 Guild newsrooms worked to deliver national and local election results and provide context and scoops. Nonprofit workers in 97 organizations were registering people to vote and supporting campaigns tied to their mission. And workers at 75 labor unions were knocking doors and supporting the will of members in other unions. We even had members running for office. (Congratulations to Washington-Baltimore News Guild Member Aparna Raj, who was elected to the DC Council, and Former TNG-CWA President Linda Foley who was re-elected to the Maryland House of Delegates!)

Good work by everyone this past week!

U.S.-based employees of French newspaper Le Monde on strike for the second time in two months

Los Angeles – U.S.-based journalists and media workers at Le Monde, the largest national newspaper in France, are going on a one-day unfair labor practice strike this weekend. The work stoppage follows an initial one-day strike on September 7. Every worker voted in favor of striking again, following many months of unsuccessful bargaining with the outlet’s management.

Le Monde’s Los Angeles-based subsidiary SEM USA Corp. has engaged in several unfair practices while bargaining a first contract with employees unionized with the Media Guild of the West, a local of The NewsGuild-CWA. The company has set arbitrary bargaining deadlines and requested to reopen agreements that had been previously agreed upon. The Guild filed an unfair labor practice charge on November 2 after management had failed to propose a new bargaining session for nearly two months.

Former Guild Vice President Carla W. Beck dies

Former Guild Vice President Carla W. Beck died on Wednesday, November 4. She was 93 years old.

Beck grew up on cattle ranches in Montana and began working at The Missoulian Newspaper in Montana, first doing part-time work while she attended university. She worked there full time from 1955 until 1962, according to her obituary in the Great Falls Tribune.

She worked at The Great Falls Tribune in Montana from 1966 until 1981 and during that time was the first woman to be elected president of the Great Falls Guild, which was first chartered in 1936.

Beck led a nine-week-long strike at the Tribune in 1974. She was arrested after management called police to escort strikebreakers across the picket line. One of the strikebreakers slugged a photo technician and police threw him to the ground and arrested him, Beck and former President Ralph Pomnichowski, according to The Guild Reporter. Beck was arrested when she fell in the doorway while trying to pick up her eyeglasses, which had been knocked off in the scuffle.

Former NewsGuild leader Jack Hagan dies

Longtime NewsGuild leader Jack Hagan saw his share of negotiations, but one bargaining session stood out.

Jack and his Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild colleagues were huddled in a conference room at The Plain Dealer, poring over management’s latest proposal.

Minutes before management returned to the room, a member of the union’s bargaining team, struggling with the flu, threw up in a wastebasket.

Jack didn’t miss a beat.

“Here’s what we think of your proposal,” he told his startled adversaries.

Jack, whose sharp wit, ferocious talent and unfailing moral compass influenced generations of NewsGuild members, died October 9 after a long battle with Lewy body dementia. He was 76.

The Guild at Local Progress goes on 24-hours strike

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.

Former International Representative Jim Griffin dies at age 69

Retired International Representative James “Jim” Griffin died on October 19 from a heart attack at his home in Gambrills, Md. at the age of 69.

Griffin was born in 1957 in Chicago to Barbara Johnson Griffin and Hazen J. Griffin, the president of the Service Employees International Union Local 372. His obituary with Donaldson Funeral Homes says celebrations of life are being organized at a later date.

He worked as a news assistant at the Lexington Herald and was the vice president of the Lexington Guild before landing a job as a collective bargaining and research assistant at the Guild’s headquarters in 1982. Nineteen months later he was promoted to international representative.

Newsletter: USA Today’s chatbot is spreading misinformation

We’re fighting a recent attempt to allow broadcast monopolies across the United States, joining a broad coalition to challenge a recent order by the Federal Communications Commission.

Under legislation approved by Congress over 20 years ago, television station owners are currently prohibited from reaching over 39% of the U.S. national audience. When the FCC repealed that rule on October 1, it violated the law and that Congressional mandate.

Consolidation in the news industry is a driving reason we have lost tens of thousands of journalism jobs in the U.S. in the past 20 years. The current FCC has radically shifted to support more consolidation and monopolies, especially ones that are friendly to the Trump administration.

The American Newspaper Guild's International Executive Board: A picture just as the 1940 Convention ended. Seated left to right, Harry Martin of Memphis, Agnes Fahy of Newark, Executive Vice President Milton Kaufman, President Donal M. Sullivati, Secretary-Treasurer Victor Pasche, Don Pinkston of Sioux City; back row, George Wilson of San Francisco,

Eighty-five years ago, this woman showed the Guild how to lead

Since Labor Day I’ve been spending a lot of nights reading through our union’s history with our union’s current fights in my mind. In the pages of The Guild Reporter, I’ve been reading about a remarkable woman who was one of the Guild’s first strikers, a local president, then an international vice president. She was fired for her union activity and fought for years to be reinstated. Eighty-five years later, she offers us some sage advice.

The American Newspaper Guild’s first major strike began one year after it was founded.

It started at dawn on Saturday, November 17, 1934 when 42 members at the Newark Ledger walked out.

One of those strikers was Agnes Fahy.