The Milwaukee Newspaper Guild is Local 51 of an international labor union, The News Guild, which has about 25,000 members in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. The NewsGuild has seen rapid growth in the number of newsrooms organizing in recent years.
While our Milwaukee local only represents newsroom staffers, across the country the international’s members include advertising sales and circulation employees, computer programmers and people who hold a variety of jobs at newspapers, magazine, wire services, radio and television stations and labor unions. The international’s office is in the Washington, D.C. area.
Since 1997, The Newspaper Guild has been part of the Communications Workers of America, a union representing more than 700,000 people working in a variety of industries, including communications, media and information technologies.
The Milwaukee Newspaper Guild originally represented employees of the Milwaukee Sentinel before that newspaper was sold to Journal Communications in 1962. The local was revived in 1984 and represented newsroom staffers at the Milwaukee Sentinel and Milwaukee Journal.
When the Journal and Sentinel merged in 1995 and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was born, the Guild played a critical role in standing up for the interests of newsroom employees during that tense period. The Guild represented staffers who chose to fight their dismissals, enforced the contract’s guaranteed severance package and improved buyout packages offered to many employees.
The Guild is a democratic union and elects its leaders by direct vote of members at both the international and local levels. In our Local 51, all dues-paying members are eligible to vote and run in elections. Only dues-paying members may vote on proposed contracts.