Update, June 10:  With our contract set to expire in November, the BANG-East Bay bargaining committee is already preparing for upcoming negotiations. That means we need to hear what your goals and priorities are for our next agreement with the company.

You may have already received a copy of a bargaining survey from your shop steward. If not, your steward will be approaching you in the coming days to fill out a copy of this short, anonymous survey. We hope you’ll take a few minutes to complete and return this to your steward, and help our unit get ready for negotiations.

Also in this update:

• Online filing
• Membership clarification
• San Francisco Chronicle bargaining update
• Sacramento Bee tentative agreement
• Hawaii Newspaper Guild merger

(more…)

The news business is changing — and journalists have to change too.

Whether you’re a newsroom veteran, a newcomer or a freelancer, survival now means taking your future into your own hands.

If you’re ready to upgrade your skills and reinvent your career, join us at our first annual Spring Training for Journalists:

9:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
Saturday April 24
SF City College
Ocean Campus
50 Phelan Avenue, San Francisco

You’ll learn about:

• Driving Web traffic to your work
• Getting started in multimedia
• Revamping your resume
• Using interpreters to report on underserved communities
• Telling stories in sounds and pictures
• Writing nonfiction books
• Staying inspired to do your best work

Sponsored by California Media Workers Guild, the SF City College Journalism Department, and the Bay Area Media Training Consortium. Admission is free to all Guild members, including members of GuildFreelancers, and San Francisco City College journalism students. Others pay $20-$25.

May 23, 2008

At last night’s Guild Mercury News unit meeting, the membership nominated and elected Bill Russell (real estate advertising) and Rick Tulsky (newsroom) to serve on the bargaining committee.

Local president Sylvia Ulloa and Mercury News unit chair Mary Anne Ostrom
are automatically on the bargaining committee because of the elected
positions they hold in the local.

Guild staffers Suzanne Arnaud, Darren Carroll (Guild representative from
Minneapolis) and Luther Jackson are also on the committee.

When appropriate, the bargaining committee will engage other union members
to participate directly in negotiations.