Guild drive launched at CNI

Newsroom workers at Journal Communications’ Community Newspapers Inc. have started a union organizing effort in a bid to become part of the Milwaukee Newspaper Guild.

Local 51 officers are providing advice and support, and our parent union, the Communications Workers of America, has assigned a staff representative to help guide the drive. But the workers at the suburban weeklies are leading the way.

They’re fighting for the same kind of basic workplace rights guaranteed for years by the Guild contract that covers the Journal Sentinel newsroom, JSOnline and MKE, such as:

Job security: CNI recently laid off 15 newsroom employees, then turned around and hired three new reporters -- at the same time it was opening a new $2.65 million headquarters building. The Guild’s Journal Sentinel contract requires economic justification for downsizing.

Overtime and differentials: CNI workers don’t get overtime pay for working 10- or 12-hour days unless they go past 40 hours in a week. Nor do they get any extra pay for working nights, weekends and holidays, or for working late into the night and coming back early the next morning. The Guild’s Journal Sentinel contract provides overtime after 8 hours in a day, as well as night, weekend, holiday and turnaround pay.

Protection against speedups: Before CNI reporters can take a week of vacation, they have to work twice as hard to get an extra week’s worth of work done in advance. The Guild brought an end to that practice years ago in the Journal Sentinel unit.

Wage scale: CNI workers’ pay is decided entirely by management. The Guild’s Journal Sentinel contract sets minimum pay rates based on job duties and experience.

Grievance process: When CNI workers have a problem with management, they have no one to speak for them. At the Journal Sentinel, the Guild represents employees in disciplinary matters and other disputes, and the contract provides a clear process for resolving grievances.

Management has started its own campaign against the organizing drive. At a June 1 staff meeting, CNI managers locked the doors while Publisher Cristy Garcia-Thomas delivered an anti-union lecture. She claimed that CNI is losing money, that the company might consider shutting it down if workers joined the Guild, that contract talks could lead to lower wages and worse benefits, and that having a union would be bad for business and would cause conflict in the newsroom. She also threatened to take away duties like posting stories online.

The CNI organizers challenged Garcia-Thomas to back up her claims of financial woes. She provided no figures or other proof.

(If some of the management talking points sound familiar to long-time Journal Sentinel workers, it’s because we heard many of the same things when we were organizing our Guild unit 23 years ago. But contrary to management claims, our contract didn’t worsen pay or working conditions, didn’t hurt business and didn’t lower journalistic quality or ethical standards. And it provided a way to resolve conflicts fairly and collectively, instead of by arbitrary management decisions.)

Because of the threats and intimidation in the locked-door meeting, the CNI organizing committee filed an unfair labor practice charge against the company with the National Labor Relations Board on June 8. The NLRB regional staff will now investigate before deciding whether to issue a complaint, which would lead to a hearing on whether the company violated federal labor law.

The organizers brought their charge just before another CNI staff meeting, this time with Journal Sentinel Publisher Betsy Brenner, the executive vice president in charge of the Journal Communications publishing group. Brenner also claimed CNI was losing money and was in danger of being shut down, but she danced around a question about whether she was trying to tie that prospect to the union drive. She provided financial figures, but conceded they might be off when CNI organizers asked how the payroll could have doubled when the staff was cut in half. Then she collected the figures, so no one could take them home for closer analysis.

Meanwhile, the CNI organizers are moving ahead with gathering support among their co-workers, with the goal of seeking a vote on whether the Guild should represent CNI workers.

Right now, the CNI workers need to know that we’re standing with them to insist that the company respect the rights of our fellow journalists. Guild leaders and members from both the Journal Sentinel’s downtown newsroom and the Waukesha Bureau met with CNI workers June 7 to offer our local’s support and encouragement. We’ll also be circulating a petition soon in the newsroom and the bureaus to express our support for forming a Guild unit at CNI.

If you would like to help in this effort or if you have any questions, please contact Guild President Jennie Tunkieicz, 2nd Vice President Amy Rinard or other Guild leaders. You can also check out the organizing committee’s blog, cniunion.blogspot.com, for more information.