Rinard takes buyout; Pearson takes over

Milwaukee Newspaper Guild President Amy Rinard has decided to leave the Journal Sentinel in the current round of buyouts, turning the local’s top position over to 1st Vice President Greg Pearson.

Pearson will fill out the remainder of Rinard’s term, which runs through Sept. 30. He plans to run for a full one-year term as president at the Guild’s annual meeting, to be scheduled in mid-September. Members will also elect a 1st vice president, 2nd vice president, secretary, treasurer and five at-large board members at that meeting.

This is the first time in our local’s 24-year history that a vice president has officially replaced a departing president part-way through a term. In 2004, Pearson took over many of the president's duties after Lauria Lynch-German left the paper, but she retained her title as an unemployed member for the last few weeks of her term.

Rinard’s 10-month tenure was the shortest of any Local 51 president, but hardly the least eventful. The last round of buyouts was announced on her second day in office, last October. In between that buyout and this one, Journal Sentinel Inc. shut down the youth-oriented weekly MKE. No other Milwaukee Guild president has ever had to deal with three major downsizings in their entire tenure, let alone a single term.

On top of all that, when former President Jennie Tunkieicz left the paper in May, Rinard picked up her duties as bargaining chair as well.

Rinard is a Waukesha County Bureau reporter. She previously served three terms as 2nd vice president, in charge of membership and mobilizing, and this was her second stint on the bargaining committee.

Pearson, meanwhile, has been the Guild’s point person in responding to all of this downsizing. He is in his fourth non-consecutive term as 1st vice president, the longest anyone has served as our grievance chair. He is a day copy editor and previously served four terms as a steward leader and two terms as an at-large board member.

Also moving up, with the approval of the local's Executive Board earlier this week, are letters editor Sonya Jongsma Knauss, from 2nd vice president to 1st vice president; day copy editor Karen Samelson, from secretary to 2nd vice president; feature writer Jan Uebelherr, from board member to secretary; and metro reporter Larry Sandler, from vice chair to chair of the bargaining committee.

Knauss was in her first term as a vice president, after filling an unexpired term as an at-large board member. Samelson, who was also our human rights chair, was elected last fall to replace Knauss on the board, then was named secretary after metro reporter Sarah Carr left the paper. Uebelherr was in her third term as a board member and is also our social chair. All three will serve through Sept. 30.

Sandler is the local’s most experienced negotiator, having been involved in bargaining our last four contracts and numerous interim agreements. He was our chief negotiator on issues related to the 1995 merger of The Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel, and he led the last stage of bargaining on our sixth contract, after former President Jack Norman left the paper in fall 2000. Sandler also has held a variety of Guild offices, including a record five terms as vice president.