• Executive Council Nominations Open
  Membership to Choose Officers, At Large Delegates, Sector and Convention Delegates
  
• WBNG Hosts Southern District Council Meeting Nov. 9, 10
  
• We Make The Post!!
  The 1454-member Guild unit at the Washington Post shows its greatest surge of activism in two decades as union activists in news and commercials departments lead an increasing level of actions geared toward pressuring a hostile Post management to resolve the contractual dispute.

Nominations for at-large officers and at-large members of the 2003 WBNG Executive Council will be received at the local’s Nov. 16 general membership meeting. You need not be present to be nominated.
Per the WBNG bylaws, an annual secret-ballot election is required for the at-large offices of president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer, and for the five at-large delegate seats. Officers elected serve two-year terms.

Nominations for officer and delegate seats also may be made by submitting a petition signed by a minimum of 25 members in good standing. The petition must be filed with the local’s secretary no later than 15 days after the floor nominations have been officially reported in the Guild Forum, which will be mailed in late November. Members will have until Dec.11 to file nominating petitions.

If at the close of the “petition period” there is no contest for an office, the WBNG Elections and Referendum Committee shall declare the nominee (or nominees) for that office elected. An election for contested seats is scheduled for January 15-16, 2003.

The WBNG board has 22 other seats: Units with more than 50 Guild members get one council representative for their first 50 members and one representative for each additional 200 members. These units must hold their own elections for delegates to the 2003 WBNG board.

Based on current membership numbers, the POST unit will elect three delegates; the SUN, two; and BNA, one. The AFA, AFL-CIO, ANA, AFA and UFCW units automatically receive one delegate each.
Unaffiliated members and members of the 16 smaller units covered by Guild agreements comprise the local’s 260 member-strong “At-Large Units” unit, which is entitled to one board representative for every 50 members.

Nominations will also be taken for three delegates to the 2003 TNG Sector Meeting, Aug. 21 - 23 in Chicago. The highest vote getter will serve as delegate to the CWA convention in Chicago, Aug. 24 - 25.

By-laws and election rules may be viewed in their entirety at www.wbng.org.

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WBNG Hosts Southern District Council Meeting Nov. 9, 10

WBNG will host the Southern District Council meeting on November 9, 10. The SDC will be held at the Holiday Inn on the Hill, in Washington, DC.

The Nov. 9 session includes a human rights presentation, as well as roundtable discussions on effective communications, and open shop organizing.

Local and TNG officer reports will be presented on Sunday morning.

For more information, see www.wbng.org or email mpattison@catholicnews.com.

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The 1454 member Guild unit at the Washington Post is showing its greatest surge of activism in two decades. Since May 19th, when the current contract expired, Guild activists in news and commercials departments have led an increasing level of actions (including picketing, e-mail campaigns, subscription boycott pledges, by-line strikes, and voluntary web-writing boycotts) geared toward pressuring a hostile Post management to resolve the contractual dispute. The union is determined to push back against a Post corporate management that appears bent on trying to dramatically weaken and eventually eliminate the union.

An unprecedented 5-day byline strike conducted in October by the Post’s reporters, photographers, artists and columnists, and supported by all Guild members, is the latest in a long struggle that began 18 months ago when the Guild launched its most serious in-house organizing effort ever. The effort resulted in 275 new members, pushing Guild membership to over 50 % levels.

Guild-covered Post employees haven’t seen a pay raise since August 2001. The Post, despite increasing profits and skyrocketing stock value, refuses to offer any wage increase in the first year of a new contract, insisting on lump sums that amount to about $900 a year after taxes. In the second and third years, the company offers paltry raises that average between 1 and 3 percent. Meanwhile, the Post is enjoying a profit margin of 17 percent on its newspaper division, and turned an overall corporate profit of $230 million in the past year. Post employees, union and non-union, showed their anger by their support for the byline strike, which enjoyed nearly 99 percent participation.

Guild activists in commercial and news departments have stepped up activism by conducting gatherings during the work day, and serving cake to their co-workers in recognition of their hard work (since the Company refuses to show its recognition of that at the bargaining table). The Post was so upset by this tactic it sent a huffy letter to the Guild saying that it had conducted “union meetings” on Post property in violation of the expired contract.

Beyond its needless stinginess, the Post is also insisting on a “right-to-work” provision, even within the context of an already open shop: for 20 years, Post employees who voluntarily join the Guild are free to quit during a 30-day “window” every year. Post management is demanding that all members should be free to quit at any time and has cited Virginia’s so-called right-to-work as the model that should apply to all Post employees in the District and Maryland. Guild Post members unanimously upheld the bargaining committee’s rejection of this outrageous Post demand. “As members who exercised your individual freedom to join the Guild,” said unit co-chair Darlene Meyer, “all of you recognize the benefits of group action and the importance of cohesion. What the Post seeks to do is destroy what a majority of us have chosen.”

Many Post subscribers have vowed not to support these anti-union tactics by pledging to cancel their subscriptions at the union’s request. The Guild continues to receive subscriber pledges every day as a result of a broad community based campaign.

”Management needs to accept the obvious: the company has no business interfering with union rules,” said Rick Weiss, the unit co-chair.

In addition to wages and union security, other troublesome issues include the Post’s effort to cut back on employees’ ability to carry over earned vacation from year to year and it’s offer to cash it out at only 25 cents on the dollar.

Post management has accused the Guild of delaying a settlement out of selfish concerns about the union security issue. But Weiss recently told Guild members, "Twice now, we have presented details of the Post’s proposals to the full membership, and twice you have sent us back to the table. Moreover, the company forgets that the bargaining committee members giving it a hard time across the table are people who actually work at The Washington Post, people who give almost everything to the Post, and who are just as impatient for the next raise as everyone else. It’s just that, like most people, we don’t like being taken advantage of. All of us at the Post should feel proud that we have stood up to management’s efforts to divide and conquer. We look forward to winning a fair settlement that properly recognizes us for what we do best: Make The Washington Post.”

Bargaining resumes October 28. The Guild will step up our activism if the Post can’t bring itself to offer a fair contract

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