Guild's Solidarity Cited as Hallmark
by Williams in her Annual Message

Editor's Note: This issue, department by department, highlights Guild activities in the past year, and looks ahead to goals for 1997.

I began 1996 urging members to become more active, to be visible reminders to management of our determination for a better contract. The results were very encouraging.

Members from every Guild department worked on our bargaining committees. Our petition to the publisher had more than two-thirds of our members' signatures. Over 200 people signed up for our leafleting. Participation in the Guild holiday party was terrific, and those who attended enjoyed a spirit of solidarity seldom seen at News parties. The overall effect could not have been ignored by management. Our union will be stronger for your activism.

If 1997 could be given a theme, I would hope we could focus on our UNITY; unity with other labor unions as well as within our own ranks. On the national level, 1997 represents the year the merger with CWA will be completed. Locally, we hope to strengthen our participation in the AFL-CIO Council, become a more active member of the CWA District Council and continue our participation on the Council of Newspaper Unions.

Within the Guild itself, my goal is to encourage greater membership awareness of each Guild-represented department's particular problems. It was ironic at the last local meeting to hear an editorial employee caution us to make sure that proposed language that seemed to work well in other departments might have an adverse effect on editorial members. I'm sure that members from Classified, ABC, Customer Service and Circulation were as aware of the irony as I was. Believe me, under this leadership, you will not see general contract language that would benefit one department and harm another.

In fact, a major reason negotiations are taking so long is because of our team's determination to examine each issue thoroughly in the light of how it affects each Guild worker. Our diligence in anticipating misuse of contract language is a frustrating but necessary task. For the Guild to be a unified labor force, the uniformity of terms and conditions of employment (as much as possible) is imperative.

In unity,
Sina Williams
BNG President

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