Guild uses Post takeback to organize

A takeback pushed through by The Washington Post during the last round of contract negotiations is fueling a push for union membership at the Washington Baltimore News Guild.Under the new contract, the Post no longer gives additional pay to workers who take on additional responsibilities for a higher job classification on a part-time basis. “A typical news aide who keeps the copier machines running, edits comment threads in stories, sifts through reader tiplines and designs layouts for print has suffered a 10- to 15-percent pay cut,” unit co-chair Frederick Kunkle reported in a post on the Guild’s Facebook page. “We regret that we were not able to save this feature in our contract,” Kunkle added. “Remember that the wisest way to preserve important benefits – and possibly achieve better terms and benefits in the future – is to work together. Collective bargaining is only as strong as the people who join together to push the company to do right by its employees.” photo: at the November, 2017 NewsGuild demo at the Washington Post; photo by Chris Garlock/Union City

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