Wednesday, June 25, 2014

El Diario Employees and Allies to Picket Newspaper’s Headquarters over Layoffs of Veteran Reporters

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The N.Y. Newspaper Guild Calls on ImpreMedia to Maintain Quality Journalism for the Hispanic Community

What: El Diario employees, members of the Newspaper Guild of New York, will be joined by dozens of supporters as they picket the offices of El Diario on Thursday afternoon to protest the illegal firings of 8 Guild members and continued cost-cutting moves by ImpreMedia, El Diario’s parent company, that will reduce the quality of journalism at the nation’s oldest Spanish language newspaper.
Who: El Diario employees, joined by allies from:
New York City Central Labor Council
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
National Institute for Latino Policy
Communications Workers of America

When:
1:00 to 2:00 PM, Thursday, June 26th

Where: El Diario offices, One MetroTech Center, 

                Brooklyn, NY
Background: On Friday, June 13th, ImpreMedia illegally fired 8 El Diario employees. The firings, which also violated the paper’s contract with the Guild, are the latest in a series of steps the company has taken to replace veteran journalists with decades of experience serving the Hispanic communities of New York. El Diario reporters and the Guild are fighting back to save the jobs of their fired colleagues and to preserve high-quality journalism at El Diario.

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Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Spanish-Language Daily El Diario Sacks 20

 
Crain's

By   

The move come less than a fortnight after the 101-year-old paper had debuted a colorful new redesign aimed at bolstering sagging circulation—and advertising. Union cries foul.

Less than two weeks after it debuted a colorful redesign aimed at boosting circulation and attracting more advertising, El Diario La Prensa has laid off 20 employees, eight of them Newspaper Guild members. The move has sparked charges that the newspaper has violated its contract with the union.

TNG-CWA Local 31003
According to a New York Newspaper Guild representative, El Diario is required to give union employees and the Guild itself two weeks notice before involuntary layoffs can begin. The layoffs, which were made Friday afternoon, came without any prior notification, the representative said.

"I'm the chairperson up there and I had no notice at all," said Oscar Hernandez, an account executive in the advertising department who heads the Guild unit at the 101-year-old paper. He added that employees were told by executives from ImpreMedia, the paper's owner, that they needed to be terminated because of cash flow problems.

El Diario
An El Diario spokeswoman declined to comment. But earlier Monday the paper, which is the largest Spanish language daily in New York and the oldest in the country, told Capital New York that the official date for the layoffs was June 27—two weeks from last Friday—meaning it had acted in compliance with the contract.

Mr. Hernandez said the Guild still needed to be told, and that the two week notification was just one of the rules with which the paper needed to be in compliance.

"There's a whole laundry list of things they have to do before they can do an involuntary layoff like this," he said, including seeing if there were any volunteers. "We believe this is retaliation against the people who are involved with union activity."

In May, the Guild worked out a settlement with ImpreMedia after filing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board over anti-union remarks by Content Director Juan Varela. El Diario was required to post an official notice saying it would honor the Guild contract.

The layoffs also come amidst charges by veterans that management is weakening the paper's relationship with its readership by looking to expand beyond its traditional Puerto Rican and Dominican audience and target more upscale readers. The new strategy, which informed the redesign, is the brainchild of executives installed after Argentine newspaper La Nacion bought a majority stake in ImpreMedia in 2012.

"Back in November, the company said they wanted to get a different audience, that we were a 'ghetto newspaper," Mr. Hernandez said. "They were looking for a more educated reader, even though [our current readers] have been the bread and butter of El Diario for 101 years."

Fewer of those readers are buying the paper, however. Although online readership has doubled in the past year to more than 1 million unique visitors, the print edition—which generates 90% of revenue—has suffered.

In an interview earlier this month, Hernando Ruiz-Jimenez, executive vice president at impreMedia and general manager of El Diario, said that he could not say whether the paper was profitable because of how costs were allocated across the parent company. But the paper's average weekday circulation fell 13% to 31,000 copies in the six months ending in March, compared to the prior-year period, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

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Monday, June 16, 2014

The N.Y. Newspaper Guild Issues Statement on ImpreMedia's Layoffs at El Diario







 ImpreMedia Continues Union Busting at El Diario, 
Guild Vows To Fight Back


El Diario la Prensa
Following the announced layoffs on Friday by ImpreMedia of eight Guild-represented staff members at El Diario la Prensa, the nation's oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper and the largest in New York, the Guild issued the following statement from President Bill O'Meara: “ImpreMedia has followed through on its illegal threat to fire veteran journalists and try to replace them with nonunion staff.  Instead of investing in quality journalism at El Diario, the paper’s new management is trying to turn its back on its Guild staff and its own loyal readers. “The Newspaper Guild will do everything we can for these journalists and to save high-quality journalism at one of the most important Spanish-language newspapers in the country.” 

Following the announced layoffs on Friday by ImpreMedia of eight Guild-represented staff members at El Diario la Prensa, the nation's oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper and the largest in New York, the Guild issued the following statement from President Bill O'Meara:
“ImpreMedia has followed through on its illegal threat to fire veteran journalists and try to replace them with nonunion staff.  Instead of investing in quality journalism at El Diario, the paper’s new management is trying to turn its back on its Guild staff and its own loyal readers.
“The Newspaper Guild will do everything we can for these journalists and to save high-quality journalism at one of the most important Spanish-language newspapers in the country.”  
- See more at: http://www.nyguild.org/el-diario-news-details/items/guild-statement-on-impremedias-layoffs-at-el-diario.html#sthash.LXXEj3s4.dpuf

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Teachers’ Union Presidents Call on Scholastic to Settle with Newspaper Guild



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Weingarten (AFT) and Mulgrew (UFT) Demand Fairness for Scholastic Writers and Workers 


New York – The Newspaper Guild of New York released today letters from Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, and Michael Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers, calling on Scholastic Inc. to reach a fair settlement in its long-running dispute with the Guild, which represents the employees who produce Scholastic’s educational materials that are popular purchases for millions of American teachers. 

“I am disappointed to learn that Scholastic is refusing to
AFT Pres. Randye Weingarten
AFT President Randye Weingarten
bargain with its employees,”
wrote Randi Weingarten in her letter to Scholastic CEO Richard Robinson. “As President of the American Federation of Teachers, representing 1.5 million educators and professionals throughout the United States, I appreciate Scholastic’s reputation as a developer of quality instructional materials…. Scholastic’s disrespectful and mean-spirited behavior toward your employees over the past two years seems out of character and counter-productive.”


Michael Mulgrew, UFT President
Michael Mulgrew, UFT President
“Teachers and students throughout the City use Scholastic’s products to achieve their educational goals,” wrote UFT President Michael Mulgrew.  “They expect and demand that Scholastic treat the people who create those products with the respect they deserve.  If Scholastic continues to refuse to sit down and bargain with the union representing its employees, if it no longer treats its employees with the respect they deserve, many members of the United Federation of Teachers may find alternative products to use in the classroom.”


Negotiations between Scholastic and the Newspaper Guild on a new contract began in 2012.  Guild members believed they had reached agreement with the company in June of 2013, when Scholastic representatives, in a stunning about-face, walked away from previous agreed upon contract provisions and halted all meaningful negotiations with Guild members.  Scholastic has refused to bargain in good faith with the Guild ever since, bringing progress on reaching a new settlement to a halt. 

NY Guild President Bill O'Meara
NY Guild President Bill O'Meara
“We are grateful to have the support of these two incredible leaders,” said Bill O’Meara, President of the Newspaper Guild of New York. “Teachers use Scholastic products in the classroom every day, and they will be surprised and concerned to learn how the employees who produce those materials are being treated.”

It is time for Scholastic management to return to the bargaining table and negotiate a fair contract for the Guild-represented employees.

Contact Scholastic CEO Dick Robinson at 212 343-6872 drobinson@scholastic.com.
Tell him that the talented people who produce Scholastic’s educational magazines deserve a fair contract now



About the Newspaper Guild of New York


The Guild, Local 31003 of the Communications Workers of America, represents 2,800 employees at New York area-based media organizations, as well as the staff of the Writers Guild of America, East, retail workers at Hudson News in Manhattan and English teachers at New York’s Kaplan International Colleges. www.nyguild.org.

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