August 6, 2007

Report from Toronto

By Michael Ulreich

President, Chicago Newspaper Guild

While the Canadians finally obtained their own piece of the union pie that is the Communication Workers of America, the diverse also gained July 16 at the CWA’s annual convention in Toronto.

On July 16, CWA delegates, by a show of hands, approved the creation of four “at-large’’ seats on the CWA executive board which will be initially reserved for women and minorities, as well, ideally, by lesbians, gays and transgenders..

The four new members will at first be appointed but when elections are held for the new seats in 2008, federal law prevents them from being reserved for women and minorities only. So instead of increasing diversity, if function doesn’t follow form, diversity on the CWA board could actually decrease.

Still, supporters of the diversity movement within the Guild and CWA see the positive action in Toronto as just the start of a new rainbow union.

“This is just the beginning,’’ said Guild President Linda Foley, who noted that since she’s served on the Guild executive board it has never had more than three women and one minority.

The new “diversity’’ members would be full members of the CWA executive board with full voting rights. However, if money equates power or at least respect, the diverse seats will be handicapped by minimal funding. A full vice president of a CWA district who sits on the executive board is given $400,000 for salaries and staff. The new board member: $6,000. Of course a district VP has major responsibilities while the newest board members would seem only to represent a minority voice on the executive board.

“Most of us in TNG believe this is a good compromise with four votes dedicated to underrepresented minorities,’’ said Guild VP Scott Stephens, a candidate for international secretary-treasurer, running with Foley. However, he said, “at some point they could become irrelevant.’’

The proposal says that at least three of the new members should be persons of color and at least two women.

The AFL-CIO executive council’s Diversity Principles state that unions should commit themselvesto “promote diversity in the leadership of the union, at every level within the union structure, so that the leadership reflects the diversity of its membership.’’

The mission statement of the Guild’s human rights and equity committee says its goal is to seek “equity’’ at all levels of the union and leadership positions at all levels as well as with delegates to the various convention and district councils. This program envisions the union collecting demographic data on union members, staff and leadership while committing itself to equal employment opportunities and equal pay for equal work.

The committee has a web site at Guildequity.org and $400 stipends are available each to four union members who want to attend meetings of “equity seeking groups’’ such as the South Asian Journalist Conference or the Asian American Journalist Association.

For the record, our three-member staff at the Chicago Local is all white male, quickly becoming more of an endangered species, especially if you are older, while the executive board includes at least two women and two people of color, in addition to one Hispanic woman. The diversity movement is all well and good but I don’t think true equality will be achieved until people stop classifying themselves in ethnic or sexual categories and stop considering those categories as comprising true differences in anything but skin color or sexual preference. 

It’s Our Time

“You’ve had your time, this is our time,’’ screamed CWA President Larry Cohen July 16 in a challengeto the industry fat cats operating with impunity outside the convention walls. “We’re on the march.’’

Cohen described this era of the labor union movement as “historic,’’ with labor advocates pushing to get the Free Choice Act approved in Congress while organizing to elect politicianswho eventually will.

Not only Free Choice concerns union leaders this time around but the huge budget deficit “and the legacy we’re leaving to our kids,’’ Cohen said. “We have a historic opportunity to energize ourselves and to energize our members, our unions and our communities, ‘’ he said.

George Bush is another failed initiative union leaders like to pillory.

CWA vice president Jeff Reichenbach, who not too long ago was our District VP in Illinois, noted that while Bush’s approval rating has recently hovered between 26 and 28 %, Richard Nixon left office at 31 and 32% still think Elvis is alive.

Just think, 28 for Bush and 32 for Elvis..

“Our agenda is simply to win the right to join a union, a good trade policy and universal health care,’’ Reichenbach said. “Bush is wasting more money in Iraq than if we had provided health care for all in the last four years.’’

Guest speaker Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, noted that within 15 minutes of their East Chicago office is a Memorial to the four union steel workers who were slain there by Chicago police during a labor march on Republic Steel’s South Chicago plant on May 30, 1937.

“We share a common understanding that no one is going to give us anything,’’ Gerard said. “We need to remember that this labor movement wasn’t just given to people. This fight that Larry’s talking about is not for us, it’s for the America and Canada that we’re going to pass on to our grandkids.’’ 

Oh, Canada

The delegates to the 2008 CWA convention also finally granted the Canadians their own region separate and distinct fro m the U.S.

Last year the CWA jilted the Canadians in Las Vegas. After initially approving the new Canadian sector, they returned the next day and took it back, citing a member’s right to object to the previous day’s procedure. Behind the scenes someone powerful had changed their mind.

The Canadians were furious and vowed if not revenge, justice, the following year on their home grounds in Toronto. They still won’t have a vice president of their own to sit on the CWA’s executive board but they’ve always had an active and persuasive voice in their director, Arnold Amber, who since Las Vegas has painstakingly negotiated the Canadian’s own sphere of influence within the massive CWA monolith.

“The last time you saw us,’’ said Amber, a producer with Canada’s CBC. “we were storming out of the CWA convention. But life marches on and you pick yourself off the floor and come up with solutions. You have to live with the new relationship before you can understand it. You fight where you can fight and where you can’t fight, you negotiate.’’

A report from the Guild Executive Council to the sector conference noted that not only is Canada’s relationship with the Guild evolving but also the Guild’s place in the CWA is also undergoing change.

“Members and union leaders must have confidence that their voices are being heard and the union as a whole must remain united and able to ensure all of its parts are working for common goals,’’ the report said. For example, Canada and the Guild “remain united in their desire to work toward the establishment of a “media sector’ within CWA,’’ the report said.

The Canadians make the point that while they had been separated into two CWA districts dominated by American members, Canada is under the jurisdiction of 11 different Canadian governments, “none of which have anything to do with the U.S. Department of Labor. The rules for organizing, dispute resolution, and work stoppages are widely different and more favorable to labor in Canada than in the U.S.’’

The Canadians will have full autonomy to make decisions affecting Canadian members in accordance with the CWA constitution, and will be financially self-sufficient while still participating in the CWA defense fund. Any strikes will need to be approved by the CWA executive board on the recommendation of the Canadian director.

Despite the differences in national boundaries, and the presence of a competing union which has swallowed up the representation of many media outlets in Canada, 90% of the CWA’s members in Canada voted to stay in the union.

“We’re not going to leave the CWA voluntarily,’’ Amber said. “You’re going to have to kick us out.’’ 

The International 

One of the guest speakers at the convention was the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Aidan White, who commented on the “terrible erosion of freedom of expression in the world at large, thru violence and the threat of violence.’’

White noted that 155 journalists and their staff members were killed last year in those countries where “governments turn a blind eye to the murder of our people’’

and 110journalists have already been killed this year mostly in Palestine and Iraq but also in India, Mexico and the Philippines.

Russia, he said, is now one of the world’s most dangerous places.

“We in the union movement are not going to accept this form of intimidation,’’ White said. “Journalists all over the world are saying, enough is enough, the killing must stop. The anti-terror campaign has in fact become a useful smokescreen for many governments seeking to crack down on dissident groups and on journalists who they accuse of publishing extremist views.There is more taps on our phones, more pressure to reveal our courses.Intolerance is on the rise.’’

White also criticized what he described as a news industry “commercially-driven’’ featuring superficial reporting that he says has caused a “crisis of confidence’’ in the industry.

Deep cuts in editorial budgets have led to less investment in journalism, less training in investigative reporting and reduce foreign coverage,’’ White said. “It’s never been more important for journalists to be more ethical and responsible. We must expose and challenge the corruption and cynicism that is destroying people’s confidencein modern media.

“We (need) to provide leadership, creativity and vision to put social progress and quality back on the media agenda.’’

Nov. 5 is Stand Up for Journalism Day

The News Gets Worse

Guild President Linda Foley reported on the latest bad news regarding the newspaper industry. Newspaper ad revenue is down 4.7 percent this year, classified down 11.8 percent, retail ads down 2.2 percent and national ads down 3.2 percent.

Apparently Sam Zell’s deal to take over the Tribune is in trouble because of the perception by the banking industry that newspapers are a commercial dead end.

“We have to deal with it,’’ Foley said.

For the first time in more than 30 years, said secretary-treasurer Bernie Lunzer, the Guild has fewer than 30,000 members while the CWA has slipped from 464,000 in May of 2006 to 370,000 this May.

In Canada, however, according to Amber, the newspaper industry is alive and well and you have to ask yourself why. The Canadians seem to read newspapers thoroughly and we don’t.

“Our newspaper industry is fairly strong,’’ Amber said. “In some cases ad revenue and circulation is rising.’’

Toronto had four daily newspapers, Amber said, that are all either holding their own or growing.

“The Toronto Star, for example, is a wonderful paper to look at and sometimes it has interesting news to read as well,’’ Amber said.

The one constant change, he said, was in ownership. The Star has had five owners in 10-to-12 years.

A comparison from a news standpoint of the Chicago Sun-Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail revealed how punchless an American newspaper can be. Granted the Sun-Times management is struggling to find the right combination of news and feature-like amenities to just survive but they should be headed in the wrong direction when they feel their main audience are those readers who thirst for news ofAmerican Idol also-rans and troubled media hounds like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton then want to read about the nation and its position in a troubled world.

Maybe Americans don’t take newspapers seriously because the newspapers themselves don’t take themselves seriously.

From the union viewpoint, the relentless organizing continues. Lunzer said the union needs to reach out to all information workers while strengthening existing locals.

“Right now we’re being taken advantage of, we’re being treated like a commodity,’’ Lunzer said. “The big problem we’re facing is the decline in membership.’’

The Good News

So what’s the good news? What have we to look forward to? A different energetic leadership at the top of the CWA, committed to political change, looking to break the mold that has plummeted union membership in the U.S. to all time lows. A politically active union that seeks out its opponents and looks to their ultimate defeat at the polls.

“Think of waking up the day after the election with a Democrat president who says he will lead the charge for the working class or waking up again and losing again by a couple of hundred votes,’’ Reichenbach said.

Financially the CWA is shoring up its books for the days ahead. Cohen said last year the CWA budget had a $27 million deficit, and “three-quarters of that is now gone,’’ he said. “Instead of running behind $300,000 a month, we’re running $100,000 ahead every month,’’ Cohen said..

While the CWA has united under its new leadership, with Larry Cohen and Reichenbach supplanting long-time president Morty Bahr, The Guild’s leadership is approaching its own crossroads, with Lunzer challenging Foley for the union presidency.

Much to its credit the latest issue of The Guild Reporter has a story about the dueling lanyards that brightened up the sector conference, with those wearing yellow supporting Lunzer and those in blue not supporting Lunzer, I guess, or remaining neutral. The blue lanyards were issued before the conference to hold the sector ID cards. Many delegates have chosen not to get involved at this point and are waiting to determine the issues involved and each candidate’s positions on those issues.

Both Lunzer and Foley will meet for a first debate in Chicago in November.

“If we don’t shape this future, someone else will,’’ Lunzer said. “We must make the Guild a positive source for change. Workers need a voice now more than ever.’’

Foley talked about her favorite former Guild member, Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote a column called “My Way,’’ and was a Guild member for more than 25 years. Roosevelt once said, “We must do that which we think we can’t,’’ Foley said.

Reviving both unionism and the newspaper industry at the same time certainly qualifies.