230 East Bay Journalists Join Newspaper Guild

by James Parks, Jun 16, 2008

BANG—East Bay writers Josh Richman, left, and Karen Holzmeister embrace as they celebrate victory in their union election.

With corporate media conglomerates slashing jobs and shrinking the size of the news pages, the bloodletting has been so extensive that Advertising Age reports U.S. media employment has fallen to a 15-year low, “slammed by the slumping newspaper industry.” Newspapers, by the trade magazine’s calculations, account for half of all media jobs lost—82,800, of 167,600 total—in just the past seven years. In fact, one in four newspaper jobs has disappeared since 1990.

But workers at the largest newspaper chain in the Bay Area are taking action. Some 230 newsroom workers at seven newspapers in California’s East Bay Area now have a union after they voted last Friday for The Newspaper Guild-CWA (TNG-CWA), capping one of the most-watched media union efforts in recent years.

For the past nine months, employees at the Bay Area News Group-East Bay (BANG-EB) fought a strong anti-union campaign by Denver-based MediaNews, the papers’ owners.  

Says Sara Steffens, a reporter at the Contra Costa Times and a co-chair of the workers’ campaign:

This vote represents a powerful investment in the future of journalism in the Bay Area, one that’s going to move us all forward, both staff and managers. It will be good for our news coverage and good for our communities.

MediaNews made headlines in August when it withdrew recognition from the Guild unit at several newspapers, including The Oakland Tribune and four other East Bay dailies. The company announced it was canceling contract talks and consolidating the formerly union editorial operations with the newly acquired nonunion Contra Costa Times and several weeklies.

Journalists from across the East Bay came together last fall to try and form a union, dubbing the campaign “One Big BANG: One Guild Universe.” Learn more about the campaign here.

Robert Salonga, a reporter for the Contra Costa Times, says joining a union is like having an insurance policy:

It goes without saying that you should have insurance to cover your family, your home, even your car—essentially whatever you hold dear. It only makes sense, then, to ensure we’re covered when it comes to our livelihoods.

Being part of a strong union is an insurance policy that protects an essential component of our lives: our jobs, and by extension, our mission as journalists.

TNG-CWA President-elect Bernie Lunzer welcomed the East Bay workers, saying:

Our congratulations for the dedication and perseverance that went into this, to all the group. The family that is the CWA and the Guild welcome you and will help you in any way as you go forward, now that you’ve achieved a real voice in the future of your workplaces.

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