THE GUILD REPORTER - DECEMBER 2009 - VOLUME: 76 NUMBER: 5

GUILD IN BRIEF...

• DETROIT ARBITRATION WIN
  

The Detroit Newspaper Guild has won an age-discrimination arbitration—not that unusual, perhaps, were it not for the fact that the defendant was another union, the United Auto Workers. But what makes the grievance noteworthy is that UAW's leadership was acting in accordance with a constitutional requirement calling for the “voluntary” retirement of staff members at age 65, ostensibly “to assure the vigorous leadership to which our membership is entitled.”



• Feds continue media two-step
  

The gnashing of teeth and rending of constitutional cloth over the future of newspapers continued throughout the fall with as little result as in the preceding summer and spring.

GUILD NEWS

• War changes everything — even at the Times
  

I worked at the New York Times during World War II, in a large room on the fifth floor, in the college and school service department. Pat Reynolds was our boss and Mary McCarthy was his secretary, but the Big Boss was Mr. Schleigh. Mr Schleigh was the circulation manager and headed up a huge office of underlings in a larger room across the hall.



• Daily Sun weathers first year
  





• Guild’s ‘nice guy’ hangs up his spurs
  

The Newspaper Guild’s nice guy is finally bowing out: Mike Burrell recently announced that he is retiring as a sector rep. Of course, he made the same announcement last year, but that departure was aborted. So, for the second year in a row, I bought an airline ticket to attend the farewell dinner hosted by his colleagues in Washington.



• MDC: Talk the talk, but also chalk the walk
  

Leaders of locals within The Newspaper Guild know their work—mostly uncompensated and squeezed in between full-time jobs and family obligations—is a labor of love. But some go above and beyond what anyone expects.



• THE REST OF THE STORY
  

In “That Thing You Do”—the sweet 1996 film chronicling the meteoric rise of an Erie, Pa. garage band in the 1960s—bass player Lenny looks back at drummer Guy, as their appearance on the fake Ed Sullivan show is about to begin, and asks, “Skitch, how did we get here?” When asked to write about the frenzied last months of negotiations with the dying Sun-Times Media Group, I can’t get that phrase out of my mind.

COMMENTARY

• One question: what are we ready to change?
  





• What’s ‘class’ got to do with it?
  

At the beginning of Solidarity Divided, Bill Fletcher recalls a comment made at a union meeting in South Africa that sums up at least part of what makes the Congress of South African Trade Unions so different from the AFL-CIO. “ ‘Comrades,’ they began, ‘the role of the union is to represent the interests of the working class. There are times when the interests of the working class conflict with the interests of the members of our respective unions.’ ”

FROM THE MORGUE

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