Brothers and Sisters:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I am deeply, deeply humbled—and truly honored—that you have placed your trust in me to lead this great union.
Forty-seven years ago, when I
Read more at: http://www.cwa-union.org/news/entry/cwa_president_chris_sheltons_address_to_the_75th_cwa_convention
Source: cwa-scacanada.ca
CWA Canada is moving aggressively to open up a second front in North America in an all-out battle to stop the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership from being adopted in this country.
The union has hired former CBC foreign correspondent Bill Gillespie to help co-ordinate a campaign that will see the Trade Justice Network — a coalition of progressive groups concerned about fair trade — to combat the TPP, the largest economic treaty in history.
CWA Canada President Martin O’Hanlon said the whole process surrounding the TPP negotiation is “deeply disturbing.”
“Most Canadians have no idea that this deal is being negotiated in secret under the guidance of multinational corporations with no input from labour leaders, environmental experts or even MPs,” O’Hanlon said.
“It’s frightening that this can happen in a democracy.”
One of the most troubling things about the TPP, O’Hanlon said, is the fact that multinational corporations would have the power to override Canadian sovereignty by suing governments under secret tribunals and nullify labour, environmental and other laws.
He also noted that the deal will result in the loss of thousands of Canadian jobs as manufacturers and others move work to low-wage countries like Vietnam.
“The issue here isn’t free trade,” O’Hanlon said. “We support free trade. But it must be a level playing field. How can you have a fair trade deal with countries like Vietnam that pay workers 65 cents an hour and have no real health, safety, labour or environmental regulations?”
“That should be common sense, even for conservatives.”
CWA Canada is being supported in the campaign by its international partner, the 500,000-strong Communications Workers of America, which has been spearheading opposition to the TPP in the United States. (See StopTheTPP.org)
The mainstream media has been paying scant attention to the TPP, which has been likened to “NAFTA on steroids,” said Gillespie.
As the largest media union in North America, he said, “our objective is to help journalists cover the story. Newsrooms are understaffed and overworked” so we need to supply basic information and contacts. WikiLeaks has been the only source of information so far.
“As professional journalists, we are concerned that the TPP is virtually unknown to the public” even though Canada joined the talks in 2012, said Gillespie. “No one knows anything about it. (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper has said zero about it.
“No politician will actually say what’s in it. Details won’t be known until it comes up for a vote” and even when that might happen is uncertain.
Gillespie said materials have already been produced for the anti-TPP campaign, which will roll out in a few weeks. Everything from social media to face-to-face meetings with journalists will be used to educate the public in advance of this fall’s federal election.
This will be a second major campaign for Gillespie, who produced a documentary about so-called right-to-work laws for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union in 2013. Made in the USA: Tim Hudak’s Plan to Cut Your Wages contributed to the downfall of the leader of the Ontario Conservatives.
– See more at: http://www.cwa-scacanada.ca/EN/CWeh/2015/1505_tpp.shtml#sthash.NxwUawyQ.dpuf
I was convinced that local Guild leaders would vote to drop “paper” from our name at our next meeting. I was wrong. Delegates had strong and passionate feelings about “newspapers,” almost as if bracing against the tidal wave of change headed toward their industry and careers.
Twenty years later, it is past time. It is inevitable. We are media. We are content producers. Ink may be in our blood but it is no longer essential to our survival. That is why a resolution to change our name to “NewsGuild” will be offered at our sector conference in January. Based on reactions at regional conferences this fall, I expect it to pass.
We are rightfully proud to be long associated with newspapers and their investments in and commitments to quality journalism. Yes, hedge funds and other distant owners have hurt those investments and commitments, but it is still true that most news stories and investigative journalism originate with newspapers.
Most stories—but not all—as this year’s Heywood Broun awards illustrate. The top Broun award was shared by the online Center for Public Integrity and ABC News for a phenomenal joint investigation into a coal industry conspiracy to deprive sick miners of medical benefits.
ABC’s Brian Ross accepted the award saying how honored he and the producing team were to receive the award from The Newspaper Guild — even though “we don’t think of ourselves as newspaper people.”
But “In this day and age in journalism, we’re all really one,” he added, all of us sharing the latest technology “to tell important and big stories.”
Members of the Guild’s Executive Council were struck by Ross’ words. They may have never heard anyone say that our name limited journalists from identifying with the Guild.
Our goal isn’t to preserve print — as hard as it is for many baby boomers to imagine a day starting without coffee and the morning paper, emphasis on paper. Our mission is to preserve quality journalism and good jobs. On the best of days, this is a challenge. It is even more difficult if we are limited by our name.
Our new name will continue to be linked, proudly, with the Communications Workers of America. CWA is a good case study for us. Our parent union began as the National Federation of Telephone Workers but reorganized in 1947 as the Communications Workers. The name didn’t limit CWA to telephone and telecommunication work. Instead, a forward-thinking organization was born that 50 years later was a natural fit for newspaper and broadcast workers, interpreters and all kinds of customer service representatives.
As the fight for a reliable business model continues for news organizations, the upheaval and uncertainty for workers brings evermore urgency to our work. It’s critical that journalists and other media workers looking for help don’t come across “The Newspaper Guild” and be discouraged by our name. We believe “NewsGuild-CWA” will make a difference.
Unfortunately, journalists are far from the only newspaper workers being hurt as technology forever changes, or kills, jobs. A brazen misassumption in the early years of the internet was that the web would have little effect on newspaper advertising.
No one predicted Craigslist, let along Google, Facebook, and the myriad other high-tech means of separating revenue from content. Google is particularly infuriating to me, so far removed from its “Don’t Be Evil” beginnings. Today, it is a multi-billionaire parasite, using its wealth and power to gain more wealth and power while fighting against compensating the content creators they exploit.
“Tell us to stop searching your sites,” they tell news organizations that complain. I think it’s time for publishers to call their bluff. Some in the media have fantasized about a separate search engine or portal, where visitors would either pay for content up front or advertising revenue would be returned to the content creators. I’m not sure why no one is seriously talking about this yet. Like our name change, it’s past time.
The irony is that even Google needs us to succeed in our fight to save paid journalists and journalism. Well researched, accurately reported, reliable information is the common denominator, whether we’re talking about a search engine’s profits or our democracy’s survival.
NewsGuild-CWA plans to be part of those conversations for many years to come.
Sep 25, 2014
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
After much thought, I have decided not to seek reelection next June as President of our union.
I informed the Executive Board at our meeting September 18. I am confident that our Executive Board can support a strong candidate but this is not a campaign note and that decision is up to you.
I appreciate those of you who take the time to read this note, it could and maybe should have ended here, but I want to share some thinking and feelings on what is, for me, a difficult moment. Too often in labor we make everything seem or sound simple, robbing ourselves of our ability to move each other in much deeper ways.
I am hoping my decision can be as much a signal of what we must do and the state of our movement as it is a notice about my own personal journey. This is the tenth year I have been honored every day to serve as President of our union. I am proud to work with an Executive Board that understands the critical times that face so many of our members. I am proud to work with amazing staff in Washington and across our union.
But mostly, I am proud of all of you and the work we have done together for decades. Obviously, all that we do rests with active members, shop stewards who stand up and fight back, and local officers, mostly volunteers, who defend our values and past accomplishments and in these brutal days of domination by financial capital, still dream and work for real change.
At the end of the day, we each have responsibility for only our own journeys. Just as the earth orbits the sun at 65,000 miles per hour, each of us, as one of 7 billion, finds our way on this earth for our lifetime, living, loving, seeking meaningful work, having fun when possible, but most of all, making a difference. It has long seemed to me that my own journey has meaning for me for the same reasons we all share—faith in basic values, love between family and friends, and shared commitments.
Jumping to our beloved CWA, we do amazing work together in these times. We push out of the shrinking box of traditional unionism, while cherishing the rights on the job we still enjoy. We realize that our traditional and historic union role by itself is much like a death march as our numbers across the USA and even Canada shrink under brutal attacks by the financial elite whose greed has reached historic proportions and whose power is nearly complete.
After Wisconsin, and so many other attacks, public and private sector, together, we developed our movement building strategy and our focus on linking economic justice and democracy. We realized that waiting for labor to unite around a common strategy would lead us to the dustbin of history. Unions have different strategies—some at least for now are faring better, some avoid the grasp of Wall Street greed. Some unions, whether local or national, have a different view based on a simpler agenda or a more traditional collective bargaining approach. This is true within CWA as well, differences are part of democracy as long as we stay tolerant and are not frozen by a lack of unanimity.
So we work with those who are willing, starting in our workplace, our local, our district or sector, then in labor councils or unions in our communities. But we don’t stop there. Our strategy is rooted in the need for national change, even if our own goals are local or just at our own employers. More than ever in our history we must build deeper partnerships beyond labor with groups that are willing to develop a common strategy for economic justice. With six percent of the private sector organized, unions must be ready to partner and not just expect to lead.
Collective bargaining and organizing rights are falling in the private sector and half the states in the public sector, and are far below the rest of the world’s democracies, and we can’t change that one employer at a time. That kind of national change, as we learned after the elections of 2009, is blocked by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, the right wing, yes, a giant national conspiracy of wealth and privilege, linked to a conservative social agenda that blocks us even when we demonstrate strong majority support.
So after decades of organizing, bargaining and movement building work, it seems time for me to pass the torch as CWA President next June, but I will double down on building the mass movement for democracy and economic justice. Our union has more activists and a better commitment to what must be done than ever. As we battle for fair trade or to get big money out of politics, we demonstrate that we can build amazing new alliances and deeper than ever. And by your convention action over the last ten years, we have millions of dollars each year to commit to those fights, as well as the best activists in the movement and the resources to train thousands more.
I am not leaving for another job or personal benefit. I am not leaving because of the growing anger I feel from the attacks on our members every day. Using last week as an example, first GE announced the sale of its Appliance Division to Electrolux with thousands of our members’ jobs on the line. Then at Cablevision, two weeks after firing one of our best leaders, the billionaire CEO compels the 300 techs to attend a captive meeting where he makes all kinds of promises, and tells them that he is paying for a private election the next day so they can vote out the union. Illegal, yes, but it is already six months since the trial ended on earlier equally outrageous NLRB charges.
It’s true that we also have great days like this past Monday, receiving an NLRB decision that CNN must rehire more than 100 technicians and bargain with our union 11 years after they were fired. Or Tuesday, winning the representation election at American Airlines where so many have struggled 18 years through election defeats and vicious attacks and now 15,000 have a union.
In the Grapes of Wrath, the main character Tom Joad is asked near the end by his mother, “Where will you go?” I am not Tom Joad and my journey is just my journey. But as Tom said, “wherever there’s a fight…I’ll be there.”
For the next nine months, I’ll be right here. Working harder than ever, every chance I get to support our bargaining, our organizing and our movement building work. Fighting the TPP, the worst trade deal in a 20-year string. Fighting to change the Senate rules so they actually debate the issues of the day. Fighting for organizing rights at T-Mobile and Cablevision so one day the sacrifices of so many will make a difference.
After that I’ll be working just as hard to build the movement of 50 million, knowing that CWA will keep leading and I can work with others to help convince them that our work together cannot just be about the next election. Economic change in America will not happen without a broad movement that includes bargaining and organizing rights as a key part of that change. More than ever, I am committed to that effort.
One day longer, each day stronger!
Solidarity forever!
Larry
Death by a thousand cuts continues apace at Sun Media, which today announced it is shuttering 11 titles and axing 360 jobs.
CWA Canada, which represents workers at several Sun Media newspapers, urged the company in a news release to reverse its self-destructive plan and to instead focus on quality local jobs and journalism to boost profits.
Director Martin O’Hanlon said Quebecor-owned Sun Media, which last November cut 500 jobs and closed production plants in Ottawa and Kingston, is pursuing a slash-and-burn strategy that will only lead to a slow death.
In her note to employees today, in a spectacular example of doublespeak, Sun Media COO Julie Tremblay trumpets that Sun Media will “continue to focus on great journalism.”
“And how will they do that?” asks O’Hanlon. “By laying off journalists!”
“I’m still waiting for someone to show me how you produce better journalism with fewer journalists. To suggest it’s possible is either delusional or dishonest — neither bodes well for Sun Media’s fortunes.”
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2013.03.18| Departing Quebecor chief leaves ‘sorry legacy’ of gutted newspapers
2012.11.13| Sun Media’s cuts, closures a ‘major blow’ to Kingston Local
2011.11.29| Quebecor’s Sun Media eliminating 400 jobs
2008.12.16| Union deplores Quebecor’s massive job cuts
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O’Hanlon maintains that cutting jobs is a suicidal strategy that only hurts quality and does nothing to attract readers or generate revenue.
He notes Quebecor talks a good story about its commitment to the communities it serves, but everything it does — from cutting local jobs to producing sub-standard local news — is bad for those communities.
Five CWA Canada members (of Local 30248 – Peterborough) lost their jobs last month, when Sun Media shut down the 152-year-old Lindsay Daily Post. It is among the 11 closures announced today. A few more of the union’s members, reporters at other Sun Media papers, will see their jobs cut.
All of those members will have access to CWA Canada’s $500 training/education grant and whatever other support the union can provide.
Sun Media is to kill off its free 24 Hours newspapers in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton as well as community publications in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. It describes the closures as “a series of initiatives to enhance operational efficiencies” and expects to save $55 million.
O’Hanlon once again suggested that Quebecor borrow a page from legendary investor Warren Buffett who is busy buying newspapers in the United States and committing to quality local journalism as the key to success.
Here are the voting results from the Victoria Joint Council of Newspaper Unions:
TNG-CWA Guild 96% in favour of tentative agreement.
TNG-CWA Mailers 92% in favour of tentative agreement.
CEP Compositors 86% in favour of tentative agreement.
CEP Pressmen 73% in favour of tentative agreement.
Source: cwa-scacanada.ca
Has your journalism advanced the Canadian public’s understanding of a labour issue? Have you been creative in telling stories about workers and their unions? Has your story had an impact on policy or law?
The Canadian Association of Journalists is pleased to announce there’s now an award for that — the CWA Canada / CAJ Award for Excellence in Labour Reporting.
This new award is being jointly sponsored by CWA Canada and its biggest Local, the Canadian Media Guild.
The award will be presented at the CAJ’s annual gala, to be held at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto on April 28, 2012. A $1,000 prize is up for grabs for the top labour-related reporting in either of Canada’s official languages.
“Labour reporting has played a vital role over the last century in highlighting workplace and social injustice and bringing progressive change,” says CWA Canada Director Martin O’Hanlon. “This award will honour and encourage reporting that shines a light on issues that affect millions of working Canadians.”
Submissions will be accepted from Canadian journalists, with priority given to stories on Canadian labour events and issues. The full details on eligibility criteria and how to apply will be released as part of the CAJ Awards package before the end of the year and will be posted at www.cwa-scacanada.ca, www.cmg.ca and www.caj.ca.
The new award joins the annual CAJ awards program, which recognizes the nation’s top investigative journalism across all media and excellence in journalism in several other categories.
“We’re proud to have CWA Canada and the CMG join our awards program,” says CAJ President Hugo Rodrigues. “This new award fits in well with our other award categories in rewarding and promoting journalism that makes a difference in the lives of Canadians.”
The CAJ is Canada’s largest national professional organization for journalists from all media, representing hundreds of members across the country. Its primary roles are to provide high-quality professional development for its members and public-interest advocacy.
Source: cwa-scacanada.ca
2011.10.28 | CWA Canada Local 30213 | Canadian Media Guild
Quebecor media outlets were all but silent today on uncharacteristically public accusations that it is waging a “dirty war” against the CBC.
CWA Canada’s largest Local, the Canadian Media Guild, pulled no punches when it came to the defence of the public broadcaster, which has been moved by the Harper Conservatives to the top of a list of federal institutions being examined by Parliament’s Access to Information (ATI) and Ethics committee.
Opposition MPs who sit on the committee describe the controlling Conservatives’ targeting of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a “farce” and a “witch hunt,” pointing out that it is only one of several federal institutions and departments that are challenging the scope of the powers of the information commissioner.
The CMG, which represents thousands of workers at the CBC, testified Thursday that Quebecor/Sun Media has flooded the Crown corporation with hundreds of requests for internal documents, many of which were rejected under exemptions in the legislation that protect journalistic or creative endeavours.
Marc-Philippe Laurin, president of the CBC branch of the CMG, told MPs that many of those requests, such as asking for anchors’ salaries and bidding for commercial and sports properties, aren’t in the public interest and are to do with competition.
Karen Wirsig, the CMG’s communications co-ordinator, testified: “It is a war being waged by Quebecor, a private media company that has, what we believe should be obvious to everyone, a private commercial interest in diminishing the role and presence of its main competitor, CBC, especially in the province of Quebec.”
In a brief submitted to the committee, entitled Paving the Access Ramp to Retribution, the CMG notes that “it is fair to say that the line between corporate interest and journalistic practice at Quebecor is not a solid one.”
It cited comments published last month on j-source.ca by University of Ottawa journalism professor Marc François Bernier, who wrote:
‘Quebecor Media campaign against CBC/SRC goes well beyond a healthy critique of a public institution and well beyond denigration. It seems more and more like a propaganda campaign that violates journalism’s code of ethics.’ [CMG translation]
Montreal Gazette MPs playing into Quebecor’s hands: CBC union rep
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting PM’s appointees responsible for CBC’s disclosure woes
Globe and Mail CBC lashes out at Quebecor’s $500 million in public subsidies
Aside from its commercial interest, says the CMG brief, “Quebecor has an additional motivation: filling its news hole with hyped-up stories about CBC and ATI. So far, the company’s significant investment in information requests of CBC has been a no-lose proposition. If the company gets some of the information it is looking for, it can use it for whatever purpose suits; and when it doesn’t get everything it wants, it can launch a multimedia campaign full of tendentious reports about the ‘Secretive CBC lacking accountability‘ . Finally, if this kind of reporting succeeds in convincing Parliament that the public broadcaster deserves less public money, Quebecor also benefits from the hobbling of a key competitor.”
“Access to government information is an important public policy that doesn’t work very well in practice,” Laurin said in a news release a week prior to the Guild’s appearance before the committee. “Our members on the frontlines use access to information regularly to break important stories in the public interest. At a time when journalistic resources are shrinking, it’s taking more and more time to get hold of information. That’s what needs to be addressed.
“Instead, the committee has been drawn into a ‘dirty war’ aimed at undermining the public broadcaster as we head into a difficult federal budget and appears to be serving the interests of a private company,” Laurin said. “In Quebecor’s case, ATI is being used as a weapon and not a tool.”
“We’re not saying that the committee shouldn’t examine CBC’s approach to access to information,” Laurin added. “But MPs need to consider the CBC in the context of all of the other federal departments, agencies and institutions that have a poor record in providing information to the public. We urge the committee to look at improving the law to make it clearer and more proactive.”
The only coverage by a Quebecor media property of Thursday’s hearing was an online so-called news report headlined: CBC pals gang up on state broadcaster. (Quebecor’s print and broadcast media insist on referring to the CBC as a “state” broadcaster as if it was a news agency controlled by a communist government.)
Senior national reporter Mark Dunn wrote that the CMG, which he said “rakes in millions of dollars a year in dues from its members at the broadcaster,” defended its employer but “avoided talk of how looming CBC budget cuts would affect its revenue stream…”
He went on to report that the CMG “attacked Quebecor … for holding the Crown agency accountable.”
NDP MP Charlie Angus said during an earlier committee meeting that “We’re trying to establish whether CBC is being accountable to the taxpayer or CBC is being undermined in a campaign by their number one competitor.”
Quebecor CEO Pierre-Karl Peladeau, said Angus, “has made no secret of his deep opposition and uses his newspapers across the country to demand that CBC be put out of business.”
Yesterday, Liberal MP Scott Andrews characterized what was going on in the committee as an “ideological war between the Conservative Party and their beef against the CBC.”
Source: The Newspaper Guild
Members of CWA and IBEW at Verizon Communications will return to work on Tuesday, Aug. 23, at which time the contract will be back in force for an indefinite period.
We have reached agreement with Verizon on how bargaining will proceed and how it will be restructured. The major issues remain to be discussed, but overall, issues now are focused and narrowed.
We appreciate the unity of our members and the support of so many in the greater community. Now we will focus on bargaining fairly and moving forward.
CWA and IBEW represent 45,000 workers at Verizon covered by this contract from Virginia to New England.
Windsor Typographical Union | CWA Canada Local 30553
A tentative deal reached between three unions and the Windsor Star mere minutes ahead of a Friday midnight strike deadline scored all-around thumbs up in ratification votes yesterday. The three-year collective agreement mostly preserves an enviable early-retirement provision that new owner Postmedia Network wanted to abolish. It was that stance at the outset of talks early in the new year, along with what amounted to a proposed wage freeze, that galvanized 230 union members and led to a 96-per-cent strike vote in late March. Brian Beaumont, vice-president of the Windsor Typographical Union (WTU) and chair of its bargaining committee, says these were a “tough set of negotiations given the economic times.” Postmedia, which last year purchased newspaper assets from a virtually bankrupt Canwest, made it clear “it did not want to move forward with any wage increases.” In the end, he says, “We got the best deal possible and that’s what we told our members (on Sunday).” The WTU, with 72 workers in the mailroom; the Canadian Auto Workers, which represents staff in the newsroom, advertising and business office; and the Communications Energy and Paperworkers (pressroom) voted 100, 93 and 100 per cent respectively to ratify the contract that contains modest wage increases. David Esposti, the CWA Canada staff representative who assisted the WTU in the joint-council negotiations, says the 60 part-time hopper feeders are the big winners. While all full-time workers get a $1,000 lump sum in lieu of a first-year increase (followed by 1.0 per cent in year two and 1.5 per cent in the third year), they get a lump sum of $500 plus a one-per-cent wage increase in the first year. The other major victory for the part-timers, says Esposti, is that they retain their guaranteed minimum shift of four hours, which Postmedia wanted to trim to three, amounting to a 25-per-cent pay cut. “By the end of this three-year contract,” he says, “WTU members will be making more than $17 an hour.” Esposti says the “elephant in the room” during the four days of mediation last week was the early retirement provision, which allows employees qualified to retire at age 60 to receive half pay, full benefits and pension contributions until age 65. Under the new arrangement, which is now in effect for all future contracts until existing employees have exercised their rights, retirees will receive 45 per cent pay and full benefits for four years and pension contributions for two years. In addition, says Esposti, the employer-funded pension plan contributions increase by 25 cents in year two and a similar amount in year three, bringing the total to $15 per shift. All three unions saw gains, including a night-shift premium that goes from $14.50 to $15 in year two; vision care increases $25 to $275 every two years; and sons- and daughters-in-law are now included as immediate family for three-day bereavement leave entitlement. Esposti says there were several contract language changes that benefitted the WTU and one that retained the union’s jurisdiction but gave the employer a break on overtime rules. The last two collective agreements at the Windsor Star were achieved within minutes either side of a strike/lockout deadline. This agreement will expire at the end of 2013.