Waterville Ratifies Initial Contract
September 2017 – Members of the News Guild of Maine at the Waterville Morning Sentinel ratified an initial contract with their new employer, MTMA (MaineToday Media Acquisition), based largely on the union’s contract with the paper’s previous owner. Continue reading “Bargaining & Settlements – Bytes & bits: Waterville”
Pekin Workers Ratify Contract
September 2017 – Guild members at the Pekin Daily Times ratified a two-year contract with the paper in July that will continue a wage freeze that has been in place for more than a decade and reduce severance payments. The Illinois paper is owned by GateHouse Media. Continue reading “Bargaining & Settlements – Bytes & bits: Pekin”
Utica Minimizes Impact
September 2017 – The Utica Guild entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) in September that minimizes the impact of outsourcing copy editing and design work from the Observer Dispatch newsroom in New York to the GateHouse Center for News and Design (CND) in Austin, TX, effective Oct. 9. Continue reading “Bargaining & Settlements – Bytes & bits: Utica”
By Myra Kreiman
September 2017 – The current political environment endangers our union, the labor movement and all that our nation has done during the last 150 years to protect workers and their families. Continue reading “Retirees: Older & Bolder”
September 2017 – The Guild will assist in planning and executing Multi-District Council meetings. Participating locals will be responsible for all other District Council meetings.The NewsGuild-CWA Executive Council has approved a four-year cycle of national meetings, which were scheduled to coordinate with CWA conventions and the election of national union officers, and to provide Guild activists with related information. Continue reading “NewsGuild Day Book”
Sept. 21, 2017 – The NewsGuild-CWA condemns the arrest of Michael Faulk, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who was covering protests in the city at the time of his arrest.
Faulk was caught in a “kettle,” a controversial police technique used to corral groups of protesters, the Post-Dispatch reported on Tuesday. Faulk and others were repeatedly told to move back, but there was nowhere to go. Continue reading “NewsGuild Condemns Arrest of Reporter Michael Faulk”
Sept. 21, 2017 – Workers at M+R Strategic Services had hoped the company would voluntarily recognize their union, but when the consulting company refused, they persisted. On Sept. 20, ballots were counted and the results were strong: The employees voted 36-26 in favor of joining the Washington-Baltimore News Guild. Continue reading “Workers at M+R Vote to Unionize”
Sept. 20, 2017 – Among the most notable threats to press freedom during the week of Sept. 11-17: Journalists were detained during weekend protests in St. Louis and the White House called for an ESPN reporter to be fired after she posted tweets calling President Trump a white supremacist. That’s according to Reporters Without Borders. Read more here.
Sept. 20, 2017 – “Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation sets the stage for a health care system that finally would make good health care available and affordable for every American,” CWA President Chris Shelton said in a press statement Sept. 19. “CWA long has supported an overhaul of our health care system and a ‘single payer’ plan that would provide universal coverage. The Medicare for All Act is one opportunity to do just that.”
Despite the fact that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other industrialized nation, the U.S. lags behind the nations of the world that guarantee universal access to affordable, quality health care, he noted.
“Right now, Senate Republicans are trying to push through the Graham-Cassidy bill that would make our health care system much worse for working families. It would cut protections for people with pre-existing conditions and allow insurance companies to make their health care so expensive that ordinary Americans couldn’t afford it. It would put an ‘age tax’ in place, requiring older Americans to pay thousands of dollars more, it will make health care bargaining much more difficult and it would slash the Medicaid program.
“It’s a mean-spirited and extreme measure that CWA and our allies will resist.”
Sept. 7, 2017 – NewsGuild member Brooke Anderson was roughed up by police in late June, ironically, while covering a protest at a Berkeley City Council meeting that focused on how police departments handle protests. The credentialed photographer is a member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild local, which includes a unit of freelancers like Anderson. Continue reading “NewsGuild Photographer Roughed Up by Berkeley Police in June”
