City-Wide Guild News

June 12 , 2001

For immediate release:

Nearly 1,000 Capital Pride Petitioners

Urge Blade Owners to Let Employees Unionize

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 12: Nearly 1,000 participants in the June 10 Capital Pride Festival here signed petitions supporting the efforts of Washington Blade staffers to organize a union without interference from the newspaper’s new corporate owners.

Petition-signers, who included prominent members of the gay community, expressed surprise, disappointment and anger that Blade management was attempting to thwart the will of a majority of non-management employees to exercise their right of union representation.

Hundreds of supporters at the gay pride festival sported red-and-white “I Support the Blade Workers” stickers and took copies of the first issue of one-page “The Blade Voice,” published by Blade employees seeking unionization.

After denying employees’ request for union recognition through a simple card check to determine whether a majority of employees wanted to be represented by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, Window Media President William Waybourn threatened to fire two employees if they engaged in pro-union activity. In addition, the company has hired the high-powered management law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue to help defeat the unionization effort.

After Waybourn rejected a third-party check of employee-signed Newspaper Guild cards, the Guild filed a petition for a union representation election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The NLRB scheduled a hearing for June 15, but the labor board may grant the company lawyers’ request for a delay. At the hearing, the board will determine which Blade employees are eligible for union representation, after which it will set a date for a secret ballot election among those employees.

Guild cards were signed by a substantial majority of the 18 employees the Guild believes eligible for union representation.

The Blade, often described as the national gay newspaper of record, was first published here in 1969 as a one-page mimeographed, volunteer effort. Although now owned by Window Media--whose ownership of gay-oriented publications in four other cities makes it the nation’s largest gay media conglomerate—Blade staffers hope to maintain the paper’s community orientation.

The petitions were circulated at the festival by Blade staffers and by members of Pride at Work, a gay membership organization supported by the AFL-CIO and composed of union and would-be union workers.

Signed by 957 festival-goers, the petition reads:

“As a reader of the Washington Blade, I want to express my concern for window Media’s treatment of the Blade employees during their attempt to organize a union and have a voice in the new corporate structure. Window Media has recently purchased the Washington Blade, which has been a community institution since 1969. Window Media is now the largest gay media conglomeration in the country. I believe the employees are acting within their legal rights and attempting to secure their position as unbiased reporters, loyal workers and voices of the local community through means of organizing with the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. I am asking that Window Media recognize the collective voices of my community newspaper’s employees!”

For more information, contact:
Calvin Zon at czon@wbng.org or 202-785-3650, ext. 17
Cet Parks at cparks@wbng.org or 202-785-3650, ext. 11

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Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, Local 32035 TNG-CWA, AFL-CIO/ 1100 15th St., NW, Suite 350 Washington, DC 20005/ 202-785-3650 /Fax: 202-7859

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