Monday, March 10, 2008
Unionized GCI employee rate holds steady
About 14% of Gannett's 46,100 employees are represented by labor unions, the company says in its 2007 Annual Report. That's slightly higher than the 13% rate five years ago, when Gannett employed many more people: 51,000.
8 comments:
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yes, it's easier to keep your job and your ethics with a guild (or other union) contract to protect you from the worst of the corporate excesses. too bad more newspeople didn't recognize that sooner. you don't get rights, raises or paid time off out of the goodness of the corporate heart, believe me.
ReplyDeleteWell it is good to see the Guild members are continuing to drink the Kool-Aid. Let's ask the Guild members in San Jose San Fran, Southern California, and Phili how Guild membership has worked for them. They paid plenty of dues over the years and then LOST their jobs when cut backs were implemented.The previous writer is also doing Guld math. Gannett's overall workforce figures went down and the Guild percentage was the same. Soooo Kool Aid kid that means your membership went down as well. Sorry to burst your bubble.
ReplyDeleteIt's truly frightening when people reveal that most of what they think they know is what they saw on TV. Even more frightening when it's someone in the journalism business. In real life, layoffs happen whether you're unionized or not, and in every industry.
ReplyDeleteI don't expect the Guild to save me from being laid off, but I'm grateful for what those union contracts have done for me during most of my working life. Guild membership is about fighting to get what you deserve for working hard and well, not about obtaining lifelong sinecures ... regardless of know-nothing, right-wing propaganda to the contrary. To believe that my employer does what's best for me, and that I have no right to exercise any power or stand up for myself ... well, if it were sex instead of work, it would be called deviant.
if not for the guild, gannett could have fired the whole staff in my "employment-at-will" home state and brought in whoever it could find who would take minimum wage. it could have fired older employees piecemeal instead of giving buyouts. it could have forced reporters to write "advertorial" -- which even violates one of gannett's own "ethical" principles.
ReplyDeleteno, a union doesn't guarantee worker nirvana, especially when free riders take the benefits without paying dues, and when wimpy federal labor laws are "enforced" by bush stooges. but i've worked in union and nonunion shops, and i've never regretted joining the union and serving as an officer.
it's the best protection one can have against unjust treatment on the job.
and while it's obvious that there are fewer union members now employed by gannett, just as there are fewer nonmembers, former employees covered by contracts are far likelier to have gotten buyouts or severance pay than those without.
Wrong, wrong and wrong! You have tolove the Union speeches. My friend, federal law protects older workers from your scenario. The union can't protect any of you from job elimination due to economic cutbacks. Just ask your pals in Northern and Southern California. You've paid dues for years and for what, a pay raise that is on par or less than your non union colleagues at the same unit, no 401-k and a sub par retirement package. Way to go! But the speech was good!
ReplyDeleteLet's ask The Newspaper Guild Local 11 members in Youngstown, Ohio, if their 9-month strike at The Vindy in 04-05 was worth it. Many left, DURING the strike, the entire newsroom was held hostage by the far greater in numbers part-time truck drivers, working conditions there NOW are much worse than the low-morale level situation it was before the strike, the paper never skipped a day of publication during the strike, even switching from p.m. to a.m. publication, and the union was forced to go to a non-union printer to print its strike rag.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the former UNION IS KING section of Ohio where this paper sits could barely sweat up 50 union members to join "rallies" the Guild had downtown during the strike.
Union made a lot of sense in the early part of the 1900s up to about 1950. After that, economics outweighed anything the unions could do and, in retrospect, the unions have a lot of explaining to do for their part in helping the steel industry die and the auto industry go into decline.
And if not by the 1950s, at least by now. The newspaper industry is getting killed by technology companies that grow lightning fast; I just don't see how the old union model of organizing can work in this new environment. That was the nut of what I wrote in this post: http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-i-think-about-newspaper-guild-co.html
ReplyDeleteI repeat, as my previous comment seems to have been disallowed, that too many critics of unions have never been there on the ground.
ReplyDeleteOn the ground, that is, actually standing up for colleagues wrongly targeted.
As I said in my last note that seems to have been deleted (perhaps because I couldn't make out the word verification) is
that
anyone who has seen what managers will do when no one is empowered to contradict them (YES, you must pay overtime!) is that corporations will get away with whatever they can.
Consider great Guild locals like Albany's (I've few connections, am just and admirer) where a dedicated local prez and support staff actually stick their necks out for each other, unlike most white-collar drones in America today.