• Guild Gets Big Win For AFP!
• The State Of The Guild
  
• Progress, Perhaps, On Definition Of 'At-Large' Membership
• Odds & Ends

WELCOME TO THE AT-LARGE UNITS FORUM

This is the fourth--we think--edition of an occasional newsletter for members of the At-Large Units of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG Local 32035. We hope to keep you enlightened and informed of events and issues pending at the local and in the units. If you have suggestions, contributions--or even if you'd like to write this newsletter--please contact the Unit Chair: Mark Gruenberg, Press Associates Union News Service, (202) 898-4825 or unionnews@hotmail.com

EXTRA! EXTRA! GUILD GETS BIG WIN FOR AFP!

In one of the biggest settlements within recent years, and certainly the largest in the At-Large Units, TNG-CWA Local 32035 and TNG-CWA General Counsel Barbara Camens won a $500,000--that's not a typo--settlement for our unit at Agence France-Presse.

What happened was that AFP, several years ago, started to subcontract Guild unit work and we filed a grievance. Just before arbitration started, the company settled, unit chair Rob Lever says. To comply, AFP must pay the 68 Guild-represented workers a total of $500,000, consisting of two 2-week bonuses, a $2,000 payment to each photo department worker, and higher bonuses and commissions for the marketing department.

Local rep Paul Reilly said AFP also agreed to restore two jobs it illegally removed from Guild coverage and that if AFP fills a third job, now vacant, in New York City, with a U.S. resident, that job becomes Guild-covered, too. (If it's filled with a Parisian, it won't be.). In addition, all photo and marketing unit jobs are guaranteed through 2006. AFP does get one concession: They can continue to deal with Getty.

This big win comes to the largest sub-unit within the At-Large Units, and should motivate AFP members to get more involved in the Guild. Just one example: While a majority of AFP workers are Guild members, it's not quite enough to enjoy your own guaranteed seat on the Local 32035 Executive Council. AFP Unit Chair Rob Lever has a council seat, through the At Large Units. But if AFP had 50 dues-paying Guild members--they're close--Rob wouldn't have to depend on us. He'd have a seat of his own. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, here's the message: "Ask not what your Union can do for you--we proved that--but what you can do for your Union." And it is YOUR Union.

Return to Top of Page

Click Here to Return to Guild Local Home Page

THE STATE OF THE GUILD…AND MORE

As anyone who reads the papers knows, large, impersonal--and often anti-worker--conglomerates increasingly dominate the media world. We in Local 32035 need look no further than up AT-LARGE UNITS FORUM PAGE 2 the road for an example. In Baltimore, one of our largest and strongest sub-units, at the Sun, now faces management from one of those behemoths, The Tribune Co. After a bitter confrontation and a contract that was the best we could get under the circumstances, our colleagues there are in a war of attrition. Tribune is literally trying to starve the Guild into submission by demanding arbitration on EVERYTHING, even on whether a dispute is arbitration-eligible. Call it death by lawsuit.

So how do we confront such tactics? What is the future of a newspaper union when battling such monsters? Those are among the questions TNG President Linda Foley will address when she meets with us and other TNG members at a Tri-Sector Conference/WBNG membership meeting on May 22-23. Foley's speech on "The State of the Guild" will start the meeting at the Holiday Inn Capitol Hill, 415 New Jersey Ave NW, at 9 am. We urge you to attend. Call it talking about YOUR future.

Foley is the kickoff on the 22nd. Executive Council member Joey Hipolito of UFCW will outline tools we have to battle the conglomerates i.e. corporate research and how to hit 'em in the pocketbook. Then fellow At-Large Units member Elise Bryant, from the George Meany Center --who just became Local 32035's new Human Rights Chair--discusses diversity and discrimination in the workplace. And at the end we focus on political action: We may be media people, but there are issues--not endorsements--where we must, like other workers, lobby and look out for ourselves legislatively. Especially, of course, the issue of media concentration and what it means to our jobs. But if that's too esoteric, remember one other political issue that affects us: OVERTIME. Now you see why we need to lobby. Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) has been invited to speak. But don't worry…It won't all be serious. We'll have hospitality suites. And on the 23rd, we trade war stories.

Return to Top of Page

Click Here to Return to Guild Local Home Page

PROGRESS…MAYBE…ON WHO'S 'AT-LARGE'

As you all know, an issue arose last year of how to classify workers--there are about a dozen in our unit--who are At-Large Unit members but who are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement. An attempt at last year's TNG Convention/Sector Conference to toss them out of the Guild entirely was sidelined, pending study. Here's what's been produced, so far, excerpted from the Guild Reporter, TNG's paper:

"TNG would extend membership to contingent workers and others who do not enjoy collective bargaining rights, but who otherwise perform the kind of work that is already described in the TNG Constitution. But freelancers would have to wait until a local created an appropriately defined unit for them, or until the TNG/CWA Executive Council created a separate freelancer local."

But a local would not be forced to create a unit for freelancers and their colleagues. And if TNG /CWA creates a union-wide local for them, it would have to give affected locals 30 days notice of that to let us "claim" the freelancers/contingent workers. Got that? Finally, if the freelancers /contingent workers stay in a local, they "have a voice but no vote on grievance settlements, contract ratification or strike authorization," according to a memo from Camens.

If you can understand all that, explain it to the rest of us. For more details, see The Guild Reporter.

Return to Top of Page

Click Here to Return to Guild Local Home Page

ODDS AND ENDS

Good news: At-Large Units member Bonnita Spikes has recovered from a serious illness and is back on the job. She stepped down as TNG Local 32035 Secretary…Speaking of that, we're appointing secretaries, meeting by meeting. We'll fill the post in an election in September…Don't look now, but the Washington Post is joining the outsourcing parade. They're moving customer phone center positions--those folks who listen to you scream when you don't get your paper--from downtown D.C. to LaCrosse, Wis. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the D.C. jobs are union…or that the D.C. workers in those jobs are mostly minorities…Could it?

-- Mark Gruenberg, Unit Chair

Return to Top of Page

Click Here to Return to Guild Local Home Page

Return to Top of Page

Click Here to Return to Guild Local Home Page

Click here for the previous issue of the At-Large Units' Forum Online

Click here for an index of back issues for the At-Large Units' Forum Online

[About Local 32035] [Local Leaders] [Local Staff] [Unit Leaders] [Local Bylaws & Governance] [Contracts] [Newsroom]
[Need a Union?] [Labor Calendar] [Related Sites] [Home Page]

Copyright © 2004 Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild