Courts, NLRB Find for Guild Members in Three Critical Cases

Good news for TNG-CWA on three legal fronts: A precedent-setting win against the Chinese Daily News, an NLRB ruling in Puerto Rico and a judge's ruling on retiree health benefits in St. Louis.

• A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld $5 million in damages for Chinese Daily News workers who faced harassment, threats and firings while trying to organize with Local 9400 beginning in 2001. The battle led to a lawsuit over unpaid overtime and no breaks. TNG-CWA General Counsel Barbara Camens called the ruling a "great precedent" confirming that most reporters are covered by wage and hour law. No word on whether the company will continue its appeals.

• An NLRB judge in Puerto Rico found that El Vocero unlawfully fired 107 circulation workers, members of UPAGRA, TNG-CWA Local 33225, in order to move their jobs to a non-union shell company. The judge found many other violations and rejected the company's claims of poverty. "The credible evidence reveals that El Vocero's financial situation was improving - albeit slightly - when the Company announced its decision to close the circulation department in July 2009," he wrote. In any case, he said, El Vocero failed to meet its obligation to bargain with UPAGRA and provide related financial information.

• A federal judge in St. Louis has ruled that Post-Dispatch retiree medical benefits are a vested right and that the company must arbitrate, as the Guild argued in a grievance filed a year ago. Backed by a notorious union-busting law firm, the newspaper is trying to wiggle out of its agreement to pay lifetime medical insurance premiums for retirees. "This isn't over, we know that," Local 36047 Business Representative Shannon Duffy said. "But we're going to keep fighting until we win this thing for once and for all.