Organizing Roundup: CWA Organizers Work Media Magic

CWA locals had their own media “sweeps week” in mid-May when CWA tallied more than 150 new members at TV stations, newspapers and the UPI wire service.

United Press International
UPI veteran and world-renowned television journalist Walter Cronkite weighed in with a letter to management in support of United Press International reporters and photographers seeking to reorganize a union, reported Eric Geist, administrative assistant to Newspaper Guild-CWA President Linda Foley.

“There were many of my colleagues and close friends who feared that unionization would color our reporting and lower our social standing,” said Cronkite, who took part in the original Guild organizing campaign at United Press 65 years ago. “Nothing of the kind transpired. Our association with the Guild actually brought a sense of unity not just among us but with the UPI management as well.”

The workers, located in Washington, D.C., and at bureaus around the country, on May 1 voted 25-10 for representation by the Wire Service Guild/TNG-CWA Local 31222, with little opposition from management, reported Ed Sabol, administrative assistant to District 1 Vice President Larry Mancino. He credited local President Kevin Keane and organizer George Mann for helping the workers organize.

The Guild represented 800 workers during UPI’s peak years in the 1960s through the 1980s, but lost recognition when the company fell on hard times, Keane said.

Other media outlets recently organized:

• Station KSBY. NABET-CWA Local 59051 won an NLRB election in April for 49 production workers at the San Luis Obispo, Calif., station. The unit is “wall-to-wall except for sales and on-air workers,” Rodriguez-Jones said.
  
  
• Spanish-language Channel 41. Workers at the Albuquerque, N.M., station overcame a vicious anti-union campaign, voting 10-7 for CWA. Four of another five challenged ballots were for the union, said District 7 Organizing Coordinator Kevin Mulligan.
  
  Local 7011 Organizer Mark Esrig led the drive with help from local President Jude McMullen and other local officers. “The key to the campaign was having a Spanish-speaking organizer and help from the existing NABET-CWA unit that recently merged with the local,” Mulligan said.
  
  
• San Francisco World Journal. TNG-CWA Local 39521 won an election for 17 advertising sales representatives at the newspaper.
  
  Virginia Rodriquez, administrative assistant to District 9 Vice President Tony Bixler, said the win is especially important in bolstering CWA’s strength with the company, which also owns the World Journal in New York and the Chinese Daily News in Los Angeles. The L.A. workers have been fighting for recognition since organizing under TNG-CWA a year ago.
  
  
• Champaign, Ill. News-Gazette. District managers at the paper voted 7-3 for representation by Champaign-Urbana Typographical Union 444/CWA Local 14407. “Staff Representative Linda Morris and Local President John Dixon worked very hard on this project and deserve credit for the win,” said Al Rudy, assistant to Bill Boarman, CWA vice president for the Printing Sector.