President's Perspective
20 Years Later, CWA Follows TNG Convention (Practice)

(Aug. 6, 2010) Good news for unions that want to pinch their pennies: The CWA has voted to switch to biennial conventions.

We in The Newspaper Guild sector of CWA have been saying: “We could have told you that 20 years ago!”

It was in 1990 that TNG’s International Executive Board (the forerunner to the present-day TNG Executive Council) recommended that the convention delegates adopt constitutional language to mandate biennial conventions. The Washington-Baltimore delegation backed the recommendation. There was a spirited floor fight on the measure,
punctuated by a blackout of the meeting room. I stood at one mic and delivered a rap in favor of biennial conventions. One couplet: Dozens of locals / don’t even show / We all know why / They can’t afford to go!

The proposal to make the switch lost on the convention floor, but was resurrected almost immediately as a referendum for all Guild members. The referendum authorizing biennial conventions passed, and TNG was able to skip a year in both 1994 and 1996.

Ah, but then the Guild merged into CWA, even then one of the few holdout unions for annual conventions. Once the merger was complete in 1997, the Guild had to meet every year prior to the CWA convention. This meant more expense, though, because Guild locals had to leave someone behind to take part in a two- or three-day CWA convention, not to
mention CWA district meetings layered on top of Guild regional district council gatherings.

An effort to move CWA to triennial conventions in 2001 failed badly, by a 3-to-1 count. Opponents cited the need to exercise democracy, just as Guild opponents had in 1990. It turns out, though, that Guild democracy wasn’t crippled, or even impaired. In fact, we came to the decision to merge with CWA during a biennial convention.

The Guild's present-day parent union has estimated that CWA headquarters would save $1.3 million by switching to a biennial conventions, and that locals would save $4.7 million when one takes travel and lodging into account.

The last two CWA conventions were in Washington as a money-saving move; there’s less stuff to have to haul from
headquarters, and what does have to be hauled goes a much shorter distance. CWA also twinned the last two conventions with its annual Legislative-Political Conference, still an annual event and always in Washington. But CWA headquarters, frankly, does a horrible job in negotiating room rates. Last year a Guild sector conference delegate blanched at the room rate of $209 a night, hung up, called back, didn’t say he was with the Guild and was quoted a rate of $135 a night!

We in Washington-Baltimore addressed this issue the past two years by declaring that all delegates to TNG and CWA conventions are commuters with no per diems and lodging expenses to be paid. This also allows us to max out on the number of delegates we can send – a terrific boost in leadership development. This year’s CWA delegates were WBNG’s four officers (me as president, Darlene Meyer as vice president, Mark Gruenberg as secretary and Sheila Lindsay as treasurer), plus Connie Knox and administrative officer Cet Parks.

But I digress. After two shows of hands proved inconclusive, a roll call was taken with electronic voting. Here’s how it works: Each delegate has a bar code on the back of a badge. You show a photo ID to the teller to prove that you are who the badge says you are. Then you get to a voting booth and swipe the badge through a reader. You get to vote the size of your local’s membership, divided by the number of delegates from your local. We were sized at 1,628, meaning that each of the six delegates had 271 votes to cast (no fractions here).

The final vote was 204,768 to 181,467, about a 52 percent majority for biennial convention supporters. CWA will meet next year, as it is an election year for CWA officers. (I hope that in bowing to the will of the majority, CWA can cancel any convention contracts made for 2012, 2014 and other even-numbered years.)

A look at the issues and other news from the CWA and Newspaper Guild conventions will be in future “President’s Perspective” columns as we ride out the warm weather.