City-Wide Guild News

Dec. 18, 2001

To: Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild Members
From: Lori Calderone, Administrative Officer
Subject: By-Laws Amendment Referendum

Guild members will vote during the Local's Jan. 8-9 election on proposed amendments to the by-laws governing the local.

The amendments have been mailed to each member in good standing, and may also be viewed by clicking here. Please take time to review the amendments before you cast your vote.

We appreciate and thank the by-laws committee's work on the current proposals.

Members Speak Out on Proposed By-Laws Changes

Rick Weiss, Washington Post

The proposed change to Article XI, an obvious attempt to prevent a recurrence of the hassles encountered by the Executive Council as it tried to prevent the renewal of Dick Ramsey's contract as administrative officer earlier this year, is a blatant affront to the most fundamental democratic principle underlying the Guild, spelled out in Article I of the Bylaws, namely: "The General Membership shall be the supreme authority of the Local."

In case there was any confusion here, see the second sentence of that article: "The Executive Council [which, yes, makes decisions regarding such matters as the renewal of the administrative officer's contract] shall be ... subject to the authority of the General Membership."

Now we see an effort to steal this supreme authority from the general membership by naming a big fat exemption to this rule. If the proposed change goes through, the membership would no longer have any power over the executive council when it comes to matters regarding the hiring, dismissal or renewal of contracts of workers.

In any other organization, such a power grab would be seen for what it is. Indeed, it sounds an awful lot like the kind of authority that bosses are trying to abscond with every day, -- and which the Guild was created to fight. The Ramsey affair was a hassle, but it was at least a democratic one. This change should NOT be allowed.

Ken May, Bureau of National Affairs

I write to oppose the proposed bylaws amendments. There are a number of worthwhile changes in the proposals, but I feel their value is outweighed by the detrimental effect of changing the length of union elected officials' terms from one year to two.

I think this union should be as democratic as possible. Members pay a lot in dues and have too little opportunity to influence their union's policies, I'm sorry to say.

I have been a member of the executive council for a long time (probably too long) and I've been in contested elections. I didn't enjoy them, but we don't have elections for the candidates' pleasure. We have them to give the members a chance to pick their leaders and, perhaps, determine the local's policies.

One of the most embarrassing changes in the bylaws is cutting the number of people needed for a quorum from 50 to 25, even though we may have far more members than when the 50-member rule was first written. But the change may be necessary because we often can't even get 25 people to come to a local meeting. Perhaps this is because, in part, what the local is doing is neither relevant to our members or even known to them. The only real contact members may have with the local may be when someone they know runs for office.

We need to make the local vital to our members, and, I believe, cutting back on the number of elections and opportunities members have to make their voice heard is not the way to do that.

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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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