ABOUT US

We are Local 39521 of The Newspaper Guild, a sector of the Communications Workers of America, one of the nation's largest affiliates of the AFL-CIO, the "union for the Information Age."

We are a strong and diverse Local with main offices in downtown San Francisco. We represent more than 2,200 newspaper and communications workers across the San Francisco Bay Area, Monterey and the Central Valley, as well as court interpreters in our statewide California Federation of Interpreters unit. Our local represents employees in most of Northern and Central California's largest and most-respected newspapers, including nearly all editorial and commercial workers at the San Francisco Chronicle and its online unit, SFGate. Other contracts within this local include the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the Sacramento, Modesto and Fresno Bees, and the Bay City News Service. In June 2008, we organized 220 editorial employees of the Bay Area News Group-East Bay, a MediaNews chain clustered mainly in the East Bay, including the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Hayward Daily Review, San Mateo Times and Fremont Argus. Later in 2008 we merged with the San Jose Newspaper Guild, joining forces with the San Jose Mercury News and Monterey County Herald.

Members of our Typographical Sector -- a storied union that dates back nearly to Gold Rush days in San Francisco labor history -- work at the Chronicle, Mercury News, Cloverleaf Productions, Design Action Collective, DC Typography, Highland Graphics, Maciel Printing, Santa Cruz Sentinel and Zetta Design.

We also are proud that staffs of some of the most respected unions and labor groups in the state have chosen us for their own collective bargaining representation. For example, we represent the administrative and professional staff and/or organizers at the California Labor Federation and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

We advocate for the traditional values of daily journalism while also pushing into the new frontiers of online media. We were among the first unions in the country to obtain bargaining rights for a website. In 1994, when we were forced into one of only two large-scale newspaper strikes in our history, our online strike paper, the San Francisco Free Press, was recognized nationally as the first union strike paper to take advantage of the powers of the internet. And that was one reason that strike was over in less than two weeks -- and produced good contracts for more than 2,000 members of the Guild and allied unions in the Conference of Newspaper Unions.

Challenges arise every day in the dynamic world of modern media. As members of the Media Workers Guild, we are ready to confront these challenges by standing together in defense of our common cause: fair wages and benefits, secure employment, safe workplaces, quality journalism and language services. We view it as a privilege to pay our union dues and participate in union activities locally and in our national parent organizations -- and we invite YOU to join us as an active member.