Friday, August 17, 2007

News-Press Objections to Union Election Overruled!


The journalists of the News-Press who voted to unionize won a major victory today. The National Labor Relations Board has adopted an administrative law judge's findings and recommendations that upheld the 33 to 6 vote in favor of unionization, in effect, overruling the News-Press' objections to the outcome of the election.

That means that the Graphic Communications Conference of the Teamster's Union is now officially certified as the bargaining unit for the newsroom employees at the News-Press. Let the negotiations begin!

This victory by the union will not have any effect on the NLRB hearings which started Tuesday where the paper is defending against allegations of having committed unfair labor practices.

Update 8 am Saturday, August 18. Not surprisingly there appears to be no article on the NLRB's lastest ruling in Saturday's News-Press. I looked at the newspress.com website and also entered the words "union" and "NLRB" into the search engine on the site and came up with nothing. The Santa Maria Times had an article on it though. The story also made it to The Independent's Media Blog and there's a discussion post on it at Blogabarbara.

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