The Guild held a mini-bargaining session with Fresno Bee management last week to discuss salaries, furloughs and other issues - - including the need for employees to have a password to access the Bee's website to do work remotely without having to pay to get past the new paywall system. The company has agreed to provide passwords.

The Canadian Media Guild has settled a grievance with CBC involving a member of the union's Freelance Branch whose work had not been paid at the appropriate levels for several years. CBC had not asked the journalist to sign a contract with payment details as required. The Guild has now resolved the issue and CBC has agreed to have all freelancers sign contracts.

Ranny Green, The Seattle Times' longtime pet columnist until his retirement in 2008, will be inducted into the prestigious Dog Writers Association of America's (DWAA) Hall of Fame on Feb. 10, in New York. Not only is Green a pet rescue activist, he was an active Guild member who regularly took crack-of-dawn picket-line shifts during Seattle's newspaper strike in late 2000.

Mary Englert, a three-term president of the Cleveland Newspaper Guild (now the Northeast Ohio Guild), has died at age 84. She worked as a reporter at the Catholic Universe Bulletin for more than 34 years, until April 1988. Local Executive Secretary Rollie Dreussi said she and the other three Guild members of the CUB editorial department were laid off, ostensibly due to financial reasons. "The Guild went to arbitration claiming the four – all Guild activists – were being discriminated against on the basis of their union activity, Dreussi said, explaining that they had picketed the CUB several times during contentious bargaining. Ultimately, the Guild lost the case. "Personally, I remember Mary as president of Local 1 when I was an executive board delegate from the Massillon Independent," he said. "She was passionate about the Guild, intelligent, friendly and witty – all qualities of a good leader. All Local 1 members, past and present, mourn her passing."