HI all! Four of the 25-30 potential members of the union will be form the organizing committee and our first objective is to form a mission statement.
Brenden O'Brien, Stephanie Scott, John Neville and Denise Lockwood will be considered the interim union until the union is actually formed by a secret ballot election. Our first order of business is to start communicating with you as a group. Hopefully this will prevent management from taking our union materials. We will be holding a "Get to know about what the guild can do for you" meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 7. We're still in the process of trying to find a place so please be on the look out for that information within the next few days.
If anyone has any questions or concerns, please feel free to e-mail me ahead of time so that we can be prepared to answer them.Cheryl Baker, the regional organizer from the Communication Workers of America (the guild is under their umbrella) along with several local union representatives from the Journal Sentinel will be there to answer questions/concerns about what the guild can do for us, what it's been like working at JS under the union, the process of forming a union and what we can expect from our employer while we're trying to accomplish this.
We'll also be debunking several misnomers presented by Cristy Garcia-Thomas at the locked door, we will threaten the hell out of you but won't present any verifiable information so that you won't unionize, meeting held last week.
If anyone can't be at the meeting but would still like information, please e-mail me.
Just so people are aware, we've had several conversations with many of you about whether or not you would consider joining the union and there is an overwhelming majority that does support unionizing. This is awesome and I hope to see you all at the meeting.
Also.... here are some factoids the JS union and the committee have been collecting over the past few days.
On Jan. 31, 2007 the Journal purchased our building for $2.65 million. This does not include all the upgrades made to the building, the cost of printing the t-shirts, the little welcome buffet or the nice pretty red couches with those ever so pretty pillows in the meeting room.
Also yesterday, one of our staff was just offered a pay raise (I won't say who).
And... did I fail to mention that Community Newspapers and "the shoppers" (which totals 75) per their annual report, had a net operating earnings in 2006 of $7.1 million. That was up from $2.2 million in 2005. Operating earnings of the daily newspaper were $30.7 million in 2006, down from $41.7 million in 2005.
Advertising revenue for all the websites -- JSOnline, MKEOnline,
MilwaukeeMarketplace, Milwaukeemoms and the 25 MyCommunityNOW sites, increased 34.3% in 2006 over 2005. (The websites are all under JCPG, our budget).
