NewsGuild-CWA


The NewsGuild-CWA is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933.
The NewsGuild-CWA's constitution says its purpose is to fight for honesty in journalism and the news industry's business practices in addition to improving wages and working conditions.
The NewsGuild-CWA now represents workers in a wide range of roles including socialist and left-wing activist organizations, editorial, technology, advertising, and others at newspapers, online publications, magazines, news services, and in broadcast, as well as the staff of nonprofit organizations and spoken-language and sign-language interpreters and translators. The current president is Jon Schleuss.

History

The organization's founders were Joseph Cookman an editor of the New York Post, Allen Raymond of the New York Herald Tribune and Heywood Broun of the New York World-Telegram. The inaugural chapter was based in Cleveland, Ohio, and Carl Randau was its first director from 1934 to 1940. It was originally called the American Newspaper Guild, but it simplified its name to Newspaper Guild in the 1970s to reflect the fact that it also operated outside the United States. It had expanded into Canada in the 1950s.
It became affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in 1936, then left to go into the new Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1937, when it expanded its membership to non-editorial departments. It merged with the Communications Workers of America in 1995. The Guild is also affiliated with the International Federation of Journalists.
The Guild has more than 25,000 members in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Its membership has expanded from just journalists to many other employees of newspapers and news agencies, such as clerks who take classified ads and computer support workers. It also represents workers in a number of other industries.
In 2015, the union changed its name from Newspaper Guild to its current name, NewsGuild, to reflect that newspapers are not the only publishers of news.
In 2021, the union changed its logo to reincorporate an eye motif from the original logos back to the union's founding and to modernize the look of the union for the future.
In 2024, media outlets reported that a high-profile organizer for the NewsGuild, Nastaran Mohit, wrote several posts on X that some NewsGuild members deemed anti-Semitic and violent. Mohit's comments included "Zionist butchers know how to kill" and referred to Zionists as "depraved monsters who will meet their fate one day." The Guild hired a law firm to investigate the actions as well as those of other Guild staffers who wrote criticism of the work of the journalists they represent in labor negotiations. “It’s clear that some of the people we pay to represent us hate us because … they not only attack the New York Times but journalism itself,” one longtime staffer told The New York Post.

Broun's influence

was one of the most respected journalists and most popular, highly paid contributors. On August 7, 1933, Broun noted, in his New York World-Telegram column, the current economic gains of the newspaper's business. His understanding of economics distinguished him among is fellow journalists, and brought him into dialogue with newspaper management. The advocated for a trade union of journalists. Broun wrote, "the fact that newspaper editors and owners are genial folk should hardly stand in the way of organization of a newspaper writers' union. There should be one." His column has influenced journalists from many states to rise up in opposition to the newspapers' authorities and organize by publishers to show the importance of the newspaper union and expanding the foundation.
Heywood launched the Guild during the Depression. During the earlier times of the Guild, there were complaints from the "rapacious" publishers about federal regulation of minimum wages and maximum hours for newsroom workers set by the National Recovery Act. The publishers wanted a tax deferral on constitutional grounds since their First Amendment rights would be compromised if the government enforced a forty-hour work week, which was considered restrictive.
Newsmen and newswomen rallied around Broun's call for labor union. The Newspaper Guild, representing journalists and other written media workers since 1933, became one of the most continuous and effective media organizations in the United States.

Status in 1942

In 1942 Henning Heldt, as a Nieman Fellow, contributed an article on the Newspaper Guild to a collection published by Nieman Fellows that year at Harvard University.
In 1934 a convention of the Guild was held in St. Paul, Minnesota. In an effort to elevate the standards of journalism, it was resolved:
Heldt described the radical past, arrival, and conservative turn of the Guild in 1942:
Positing a "legend of newsmen", Heldt lamented that the Guild finished off the legend:
In 1970s, the union expanded its scope outside of the United States. and adopted the name of Newspaper Guild or TNG. It also collaborated with another union called the Communications Workers of America in 1977. The combined union had hundreds of thousands of workers in telecommunications and media, and later adopted a new name, The Newspaper Guild-CWA.

Campaigns

In 1957, the Guild adopted a resolution demanding that the United States end its prohibition on the travel of American journalists to China. The Guild described the travel ban as "offensive intrusion against people's right to know in a democracy such as ours and an unwarranted hindrance of newsmen in the pursuit of their duty to keep our people informed."
On May 18, 2020, the NewsGuild launched the campaign to advocate for local news outlets as part of the federal government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Between January and August 2020, as many as 36,000 journalists had experienced pay cuts, furloughs, or layoffs.
As part of the campaign, the group has supported legislative efforts, such as S.3718, to expand access to the Paycheck Protection Program for local news outlets that have been excluded from it, as well as H.R.7640 to create tax credits incentivizing subscribing to and advertising in local newspapers.
In July 2020 NewsGuild president Jon Schleuss sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, noting his warning "that the local news industry is facing an extinction-level event".
On April 13, 2021, more than 650 tech workers at The New York Times announced that they were unionizing with the NewsGuild-CWA. In July 2021 the workers filed for union certification with the National Labor Relations Board. On August 11, 2021, the New York Times Tech Guild held a half-day work stoppage in protest of alleged union-busting tactics from the New York Times management for which the Guild filed at least three unfair labor practices charges with the NLRB. If the union is certified, it will be the largest union representing tech workers with collective bargaining rights in the country. The New York Times Tech Guild campaign exists within the broader context of the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees initiative by the Communications Workers of America to organize tech, game, and digital workers in the US and Canada.

Presidents