The Newspaper Guild is calling on unpaid writers of the Huffington Post to withhold their work in support of a strike launched by Visual Arts Source in response to the company’s practice of using unpaid labor. In addition, we are asking that our members and all supporters of fair and equitable compensation for journalists join us in shining a light on the unprofessional and unethical practices of this company.

"Congratulations to this year's $5000 Eddie Bryan Scholarship winner, Ty Stannard. Ty is the son of Tim Stannard, member of United Auto Workers Local 1853 in Spring Hill, TN. Ty will be attending the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. (AFL-CIO) had 37 outstanding applications turned in this year and we wish each of them a very successful future."

TN Labor News. September 2010, Volume 12, Issue 1. AFL-CIO.

Friday, November 20th and Saturday, November 21st

Topics of Discussion include Organizing Presentation, Alternative Ownership of Newspapers, and Human Rights & Equity Update which will be lead by Carol Rothman, International Representative.

The Guild Reporter, July-October 2009

A long-running dispute at the Eugene Register-Guard over Guild use of the company’s email system was ended by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which in a sometimes sharply worded opinion sustained the local’s president, Suzi Prozanski, while smacking down the newspaper’s hired gun, union-baiting attorney L. Michael Zinser.

In a parallel development to the Bay Area News Group-East Bay brief, the San Jose Mercury News unit of the California Media Workers Guild likewise approved a new 18-month contract with MediaNews. The 127-39 vote June 1 followed a presentation by the negotiating committee that acknowledged the agreement “is not something that we recommend lightly,” but which given the state of the industry “represents our best efforts at protecting workers, jobs and quality.” Among the hits: an immediate 7% cut in pay for anyone above scale another 2% cut January 1, plus higher medical insurance premiums and less vacation time.

Members of the Terre Haute Newspaper Guild approved, 24-1, a one-year extension of their contract with the Tribune-Star just one week after the Community Newspaper Holdings-owned newspaper fired its publisher. Essentially a standstill agreement with some minor adjustments, the extension includes a one-year wage freeze; a company commitment to absorb any health insurance premium increases through 2010; and a no-layoff commitment through the end of September of this year. Givebacks include a change in overtime computation, to be paid after 40 hours instead of daily; callback at time-and-a-half for hours worked instead of a minimum of four hours’ pay at time-and-a-half; and an allowance for flexible scheduling by mutual agreement between employee and supervisor.

Even yielding to company demands is no guarantee that management won’t be back with hand outstretched; sometimes within a month. Exhibit A: the Manchester Guild, which recently agreed to a 2% cut in wages and other givebacks, only to be told a heartbeat later that employees also would have to take two weeks of unpaid leave. “This is disturbing,” said Manchester Guild president Norm Welsh. “The ink wasn’t even dry on the last givebacks. Is management not even planning for a month out? Or have they planned to get what they want by using the national economic crisis and constant ‘crisis bargaining’ off contract and away from the table?”

Paper Cuts, the internet graphic (graphicdesigner.net/papercuts/) that tracks layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers, finished the first quarter with a minimum of 7,484 jobs lost. That's roughly half of the total for all of 2008. And it's not just jobs that are disappearing: the Guild-represented Rocky Mountain News made an outsized contribution to the list by shutting down altogether, while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer also vanished, at least in print form, and now appears only as an on-line ghost of itself.

Sun-Times Media Group vets, laid off without severance, recount their last day at work.

“Save The Globe” rally planned for Friday at noon outside Faneuil Hall

New York Guild negotiators will meet with Times management representatives next week to respond to their proposal that Guild-covered employees at The Times and Times Digital accept a 5 percent pay cut, which was imposed on the company’s nonunion employees earlier this month.

The Purple Army marched through Washington D.C. on March 9 and 10, visiting Congressional Offices as organized labor’s allies on Capitol Hill introduced the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

     The newspaper industry’s latest cost-cutting trend, the unpaid furlough, started as an alternative to layoffs but has started looking more like contingent labor. Now it’s getting pushback from the St. Louis Guild, which recently responded to Post-Dispatch demands for a second one-week furlough by rejecting a straight up-or-down vote. Instead, the local voted 100-27 to amend the proposal, agreeing to the furlough only in exchange for a no-layoffs agreement during contract negotiations.
     Those contract negotiations, incidentally, suggest that Lee Enterprises has been reading the New York Times and MediaNews playbooks: the company is demanding that Post Dispatch workers accept a 15% pay cut in the first year of a three-year contract, followed by additional 5% cuts in years two and three. Other Lee proposals include the right to lay off employees for any reason and without regard to seniority, as well as a right to suspend employees for up to three days without “just cause” or recourse through grievance procedure. Call that the “Gitmo Provision.”

You know times are hard when a 5% pay cut is good news – which may explain why Guild members at the New York Times voted overwhelmingly, 377-36, to accept just that through the end of the year; Guild members at the newspaper’s digital unit were even more single-minded, voting 50-0 in favor. Effective May 5, the pay cut was presented by management as an alternative to as many as 80 lay-offs, including 70 in the newsroom.

New York Guild members voted 23-2 on May 29 to ratify a four-year contract with Newsweek. The new pact includes a lump sum payment of $500 this October; wage increases of 2% in January of 2010 and 2011; and a 3% wage increase January 1, 2012. The agreement also permits management to substitute a cash-balance plan for its retirement plan for employees hired after such a change is instituted.