Come sail away

Ahoy, mateys!

Join your Journal Sentinel crew mates on Aug. 18 for a sunset cruise on the waters of the Milwaukee River and the inner harbor of Lake Michigan aboard the good ship Edelweiss.

Hors d'oeuvres and cocktails will be served as we sail leisurely past the sights of downtown and the Third Ward and get a great view from the lake of the art museum's Calatrava addition.

All Guild members in good standing are invited. Each member may bring one guest on the two-hour tour. And it won't cost you a dime or a doubloon; it's all free. We weigh anchor at 7:30 p.m. sharp from the river walk at 204 W. Highland. Boarding begins at 7:15 p.m., so don't be late.

If you're planning to sail with us, you must RSVP by noon Aug. 6 by sending an e-mail to info@milwaukeenewsguild.org. Invitations also are being mailed to all Guild members.

So don't miss the boat! Join us for an evening of good food, great drinks and Guild camaraderie.

72nd meeting of The Newspaper Guild

The world is facing a “terrible erosion of free expression,” Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, told the 149 members of The Newspaper Guild gathered in Toronto on Saturday.
White said violence targeted at journalists has increased dramatically in the last several years. He said that 155 journalists and media staff people were killed in 2006 in warfare and by militias and gangsters around the world. Among those attending the guild meeting were Local 51 President Jennie Tunkieicz,1st Vice President Jerry Ziegler, and 2nd Vice President Amy Rinard.
A native of Ireland, White has been a consultant to several United Nations agencies, the Council of Europe and the European Commission on the mass media and human rights. He has worked as a reporter for The Guardian and other newspapers in Great Britain.
He railed against the impunity of governments that at the least allow killers to get away with the murder of journalists and at the worst engaged in actual complicity in those killings. He noted that there are 14 unsolved murders of journalists in Russia alone.
White said that the International Federation of Journalists has been pushing both the U.N. and the U.S. government to take measures to safeguard journalists.
He noted that BBC reporter Alan Johnston, who was released after kidnappers in Gaza held him for 114 days, was especially grateful to the pressure brought by the federation on governments and private groups to work for his release. Johnston is now working with the federation to try to free other journalist around the world who are being held by kidnappers or governments.
Some governments, Johnston said, has found the anti-terrorism campaign to be a “useful smokescreen” to attack and hold journalists.
And yet it is just those conditions that make it so important for the preservation of a free press, White said.
“Never before has it been so important for journalists ot be informed, ethical and responsible,” he said.
Adding to the pressure on journalists is the turmoil in newspaper ownership, especially in the United States, he said, where sensationalism is pushing aside good solid journalism.
And there is more to come, he said, as ever-changing technology puts more pressure on journalists. “The greatest tests we face are still ahead,” he said.

72nd meeting of The Newspaper Guild

With a backdrop of U.S., Canadian and Puerto Rican flags, the 72nd meeting of the Newspaper Guild sector conference opened Friday morning in Toronto, one of the most ethically diverse cities, and union supporting, in the world.
Lise Lareau, president of TNG-CWA Local 30213, the host local of the conference, welcomed the 148 Guild delegates from across America and Canada. Lareau noted that Toronto is a great newspaper town, with four daily newspapers -- Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Toronto Globe and Mail and the National Post -- as well as a daily Chinese and daily Italian newspaper.
She also noted that the conference is being held just a few blocks from the headquarters of CBC, where 2,500 members of TNG work.
Simcoe Park next to CBC headquarters is a place with history for the Guild because of the many events that took place there during the contentious CBC strike a few years ago, said Lareau.
Carol Rothman, chairperson of TNG-CWA, said this is the 72nd Guild sector conference. Diversity, collective bargaining and organizing are the three most important tasks facing TNG, Rothman said.
Rothman said that the current efforts toward collective bargaining have come amid the most hostile environment from management in recent memory.
Linda Foley, president of The Newspaper Guild, offered grim statistics on the deterioration of advertising fin daily newspapers in the U.S. With that grim outlook, benefits and jobs continue to disappear for media workers. She talked of the “scorched-earth, chainsaw cost-cutting” actions at Media News but noted that there are positive efforts across the country, and specifically talked of the efforts of Local 51 to organize reporters at CNI and stop the outsourcing of Journal Sentinel bargaining-unit work to lower-paid CNI staffers.
“We are diverse; we are a united front against” the forces that face us, Foley said.
She talked of her “favorite dead guild member, Eleanor Roosevelt, who belonged to the guild for 25 years. Foley offered what she said was one of her favorite quotes from Roosevelt, who once said: “A woman is like a teabag, you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.” Foley said the Guild as a whole could take a lesson from that sentiment.
TNG Secretary-Treasurer Bernie Lunzer talked of the differences and the common goals of the U.S. and Canadian TNG locals. “We have our uniqueness, our distinctions, but we don’t fear them,” he said.
He also talked of the decline in Guild membership in the past few years from 33,000 to 30,000 members. “The biggest problem we face is the decline in membership,” he said, noting that membership has dropped recently from 33,000 to 30,000. The solution? Broaden into other areas of the media sector. “It’s clear to me that locals realize that they have to reach out to members and non-members,” said Lunzer. “We need to develop real diversity strategies that work” at all levels, both national and local, he said.
Lunzer said that it is tragic that newspaper people are leaving the industry and going to public relations and other jobs outside the industry and enjoying their work for the first time in a long time. “How sad it that?,” he said.
Arnold Amber, director of CWA Canada, said the union faces many challenges in an industry that is changing at a breakneck pace. Yet he said the industry in Canada does not face as many problems as the U.S. industry. He noted that two of the dailies in Toronto have held their own in circulation in recent years.
“But the real keynote in Canada is the same as it is in the United States: change, change, change,” Amber said.
He noted that the last time he met most of the delegates, he and the Canadian delegates had “stormed out” of the CWA convention in Las Vegas last year after a measure favorable to Canadian representation was rejected. Much has changed since then, he said, and relations have improved greatly between the U.S. and Canadian sectors.
Foley talked of the pension reform act which she called the “pension destruction fund” because of the way it is structured.

69th Annual Meeting of the Communications Workers of America

Some notes from Jerry Ziegler at the 69th Annual Convention of the Communications Workers of America on Monday, July 16.

-- David Miller, mayor of the host city of Toronto, reminded delegates that “every day is labor day.” Miller is very pro-labor. The phrase was his slogan during his most recent mayoral campaign and he offered it to the 1,800 people attending 69th annual CWA convention to remind them that people in the labor movement need to work for fairness and equality and workers’ rights all the time.
-- Next up was the Rev. James Evans, a minister with the United Church of Canada, who gave the invocation for the opening day of the convention. More interesting that his invocation was his current pursuit: He’s organizing a labor union for clergy. He said the idea, based on a similar union organized in England, is to protect ministers from everything from abusive parishioners to unwarranted removal from a posting. He also had the best quote of the day: “No matter how almighty a boss may be, he’s not as strong as a union.”
-- Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labor Council, noted that Canada has the highest percentage of labor union membership in the G8, the international group of representatives of the eight nations that have about 65% of the world’s economy. About one in three Canadians belongs to a labor union. Compare that to the U.S., where only 7% of Americans belong to unions, lower than when collective bargaining was officially protected by the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.
Georgetti was the first but far from the last during the day to extol the Canadian universal health care system and he encouraged the U.S. labor movement to keep pushing for a similar plan.
He also told convention attendees that a recently passed law in Canada prevents anyone, even a judge, from throwing out a collective bargaining agreement if a company enters bankruptcy.
-- CWA President Larry Cohen followed up on Georgetti’s comments, saying a major challenge to the U.S. labor movement is to try to bring membership back up to and beyond the 35% level of the 1950s.
Cohen said he fight for universal health care will be an important effort for the U.S. labor movement.
He also said it is crucial to push for passage of the employee free choice act, which made it through the U.S. House but fell nine votes short in the Senate recently.
-- Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America, said he wants his grandson to have the same chances in life as he did. But he said that can’t happen without a strong labor movement.
His take on the U.S. health care system was ominous. Unless something is done by the next U.S. president, health care costs in the U.S. will consume 20% of the Gross Domestic Product.
-- CWA Executive Vice President Jeff Rechenbach said the survival of the middle class is dependant on the labor movement. He spoke of a new move to use CWA members as political activists.
Rechenbach also visited the health care issue. “We missed an opportunity to deal with health care in the early ‘90s. Well shame on us if we don’t deal with it this time.”
In afternoon sessions, delegates by voice vote passed five resolutions. The most important and controversial was to add four seats to the CWA executive board to increase diversity. The other resolutions included creating an exclusively Canadian region (currently, some CWA members are attached to U.S. regions); calling for a rollback of increased postal rates for small and medium periodicals; a call for the U.S. and Canadian governments to use sanctions to attempt to end conflict in Darfur; and a measure to increase the pace of political activity aimed at electing candidates favorable to labor issues.

Return of the Webmaster

Heather Gergen has been named the Milwaukee Newspaper Guild's new Webmaster, succeeding Mandy Jenkins, a JSOnline producer who left for a job in Cincinnati. Heather, a JSOnline producer, served a previous stint as Webmaster and also has been a member of our Bargaining Committee.

Also, Adam Lovinus has been named newsletter writer, a vacant post last filled by local news editorial assistant Steve Potter. Adam, the MKE editorial assistant, is a new Guild member who also serves on our Social Committee.