Awarded in 2009

Rebecca Rosen Lum

Launching New union for freelance journalists in California 

CWA, Local Northern California Media Workers Guild No. 39521: "The workplace is changing and we are changing with it," says Rebecca Rosen Lum, who won a Berger-Marks grant to help create the first-ever freelance unit linked to a Newspaper Guild-CWA local union.

"As newsrooms are shrinking, many former journalists prefer to remain in journalism and work independently, knowing how critical this work is to a democracy," explains Rosen Lum. "That's a brave thing to do; for many, that means laboring without health coverage or financial benefits."

She knows the job shouldn’t require so much bravery. “I believe mightily in the honor of work and the right of all working people to organize,” asserts Rosen Lum, who helped unionize the Contra Costa Times when she worked there.

For 25 years Rosen Lum was a reporter so well respected that she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. And her union roots go back even further – her father was one of the courageous auto workers in the historic Flint sitdown strike that unionized General Motors.

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Awarded in 2009

Karly Safar

Campus organizer at University of Tennessee earns renewed support 

United Campus Workers- CWA , Local 3865: Karly Safer won renewed support for her drive to organize wall-to-wall for the Communications Workers of America's United Campus Workers at the University of Tennessee. She began organizing there as a student. This is a continuation of a grant she won in 2008.

Karly recently helped plan and turn out people for a campus rally of 400 workers, students and community members to protest looming budget cuts of $75 million, that would endanger close to a thousand jobs.

Although she is only working part-time she is involved in every aspect of the campaign. On any given day you might find her leafleting faculty on the Chattanooga campus, helping union supporters reach out to their co-workers, coordinating phone banks or working on strategic mapping, She’s personally visited hundreds of workers and helped steer the union to its best year yet for membership growth.

“Karly is absolutely incredible,” says one local union staffer. “Her rapport with the workers on our campus is something special, and I am so thankful, honestly, that we have gotten the privilege to work with her.”

Awarded in 2009

Sara Steffens

Courageous reporter fights back, wins first contract 

California Media Workers Guild, Local TNG-CWA 39521: Sara Steffens, an award-winning reporter at California's Contra Costa Times, became convinced that she and 200-plus co-workers at the Bay Area Group News Group-East Bay (BANG-EB) needed a union to get fair wages, job security and benefits. BANG-EB is a nine-newspaper unit of MediaNews that includes the Oakland Tribune and other dailies across the bay from San Francisco. Steffens served as co-chair of the employee committee and helped convince two out of three co-workers to sign union cards. But management decided to play hard-ball, and its aggressive attacks cut deeply into union support. The union narrowly won the election on June 13, 2008, and within a month the company laid off 29 workers, including Steffens. The union is challenging the layoffs at the NLRB.

End of story for Sara? No way. When they laid her off, she became the anti-union consultants’ worst nightmare. Workers were scared but hanging together, inspired by her courageous organizing. Steffens won a grant from the Berger-Marks Foundation to keep on building the union as an organizer with The Newspaper Guild-CWA Local 39521, and the grant was renewed in 2009.

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Awarded in 2009

Alanna Stone

Grant helps launch drive to bring in new members at unionized companies 

The Newspaper Guild of New York, Local TNG Local 3/CWA Local 31003: Alanna Stone, the staff organizer who helped 736 Research assistants at the State University of New York join the CWA in December, won a grant to launch a vigorous drive to bring in new members at unionized companies.

Stone organizes for the Newspaper Guild of New York TNG Local 3/CWA Local 31003. Armed with grant support, she is working with rank and file union officers to identify potential new members and units at companies they represent. From there she’s helping get campaigns off the ground. Potential members have jobs ranging from reporting, editing and photography to online and IT work.

Stone is convinced that a major drive will strengthen the union’s bargaining clout and improve the lot of all the workers

. Before Ms. Stone came on staff, she chaired the Newspaper Guild unit at WQXR-FM, a New York Times-owned station, where she did a great job signing up new members.

Awarded in 2008

Zelmira "Mira" Hatala

Building a Contract Action Team at the Washington Post 

Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, Local 32035, TNG-CWA: Hatala, who had previously served as chief mobilizer for two union contract campaigns, came out of early retirement for the current drive.

Since the Post is an open shop, which means union-represented workers aren't members until they individually join, Hatala's goal is to educate people about the union and convince a majority to sign up. She aims to recruit and train grassroots leaders through a Contract Action Team. Through the Team, activists convey information to and from the workforce, mobilize employees around issues, and organize meetings that offer training. Hatala also intends to update and improve printed materials and a related video.

Awarded in 2008

Carmen Hulbert

CWA Shop steward organizes in Mexico 

News Media Guild, Local 31222, The Newspaper Guild-CWA: Hulbert won a grant for her work with the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center to organize around press and media freedom in Mexico. A high proportion of Mexican journalists are women.

Hulbert honed her organizing skills and got a taste of success when she helped unionize EFE News Service workers two years ago.

Awarded in 2008

Kathy Petersen

Local Vice President reaches out in aerospace 

IAMAW (Machinists Union), Local 839: Peterson won a grant to help her to sign up more union members among the 6200 manufacturing workers at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita Kansas, represented by Local Lodge 839 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Since Kansas is a "right to work" state, each member has to sign up with the union individually, and just over a majority had done so when she applied for the grant. As the July contract opener approached, building the membership would strengthen the union's negotiating power. Petersen's goal is to contact all non-members. She'd worked on previous in-plant organizing campaigns, and over the previous year, more than 770 new members joined the union.

Awarded in 2008

Karly Safar

From student activist to CWA organizer 

United Campus Workers, Communications Workers of America, Local 3865 in Tennessee: Safar began organizing to win a living wage for all University of Tennessee workers when she was a student and joined the Progressive Student Alliance. Now she's pursuing that goal as an organizer with the Communications Workers of America's United Campus Workers. In the 2005-2006 academic year they had pushed for a $1,200 raise for all UT employees, using a student Labor Week of Action and other actions to pressure the administration. The legislature approved the raise the following year. In their 2007-2008 campaign, the union-student alliance won overtime pay for all UT Agricultural workers, and the president of the UT system pledged to launch a wage study.

"We are organizing wall to wall every sector of the University workforce," says Safar. Just over half the workforce are women.

Awarded in 2006

Kathy Ancil

Breakthrough in organizing utility call centers 

Utility Workers Union of America, Local 123: Kathy Ancil was a temporary organizer who was determined to organize more call centers, when she applied for a Berger-Marks grant in 2005. Now she has a permanent position with the Utility Workers Union, partly because the grant gave her a chance to show what she could do, and brought new resources into her work organizing call centers, where workers tend to be women.

When Ancil started work at a Consumers Energy call center years ago, all five of the company’s Michigan call centers were non-union. ”I was not mistreated,” she recalled, “but I saw how other people were treated. And our rights and benefits were being taken away.” When the Utility Workers launched its “Plan Respect” campaign to organize call centers, she enthusiastically volunteered to help. Now all five call centers belong to the Michigan State Utility Workers Union of America, which represents workers at Consumer Energy Company. Ancil was elected chief steward and now works for the national parent union, as their first woman organizer.

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Awarded in 2006

Joanna Millhouse

Preparing for Baltimore Sun bargaining 

Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, Local 30325: “I have an overwhelming sense of joy - I really enjoy being involved in the labor movement,” says Joanna Millhouse. “I like to see changes, and if I can help make the environment better for anyone, I would like to do that.”

That approach has inspired Millhouse’s campaign to organize and mobilize members of Newspaper Guild Local 30325. She's been using a Berger-Marks grant to help 500-plus news writers, advertising workers, computer programmers and editors at the Baltimore Sun gear up for tough bargaining in 2007. "We started early," she says, "because they’ve always had a lot of problems” and needed to be prepared for company scare tactics.

With the local union strapped by job cuts and paying big expenses to represent workers legally and in bargaining, the grant was crucial to hiring her, and helped bring in additional support.

Under the grant, Milhouse also pursued organizing contacts at two non-union workplaces. Although neither has an active union drive yet, she feels she’s made headway in explaining how the union could help them deal with their grievances. “We live in an environment of fear,” she adds. “I try to be a strong person and show where that strength comes from.”

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Awarded in 2006

Lesley Phillips

Organizing online workers at boston.com 

The Newspaper Guild-CWA, Local 31032: When Lesley Phillips took an early buyout retirement from her job as a page designer/artist at the Boston Herald newspaper, she says she had “no intention of retiring in a traditional sense.” Instead she volunteered to help the union organize online media workers at the Boston Globe, and won a Berger-Marks grant that helped her succeed.

Like many other papers, the Boston Globe launched its online division, boston.com, in the early ‘90’s as a non-union enterprise, even though many employees worked side by side with unionized Globe editorial staff. In 2005 the local Newspaper Guild successfully won the right to organize the boston.com workforce, and the following January Phillips, who had already done some of the ground work, applied for a grant from the Berger-Marks Foundation to support the organizing. The union “was feeling an economic crunch,” she says, and didn’t have staff with experience organizing online workers.

‘Always a little rebellious’

Phillips says she was always a little rebellious, and resented employers “treating you like their children, and expendable ones at that.” At the Herald she had been asked to serve as chairperson after helping get a new leadership slate elected. She later helped organize at two newspapers, including the Globe, and was on the Executive Council of The Newspaper Guild TNG-CWA Local 31032.

As the online campaign got underway, Phillips discovered that few unions had tried to organize online workers through the kind of “targeted campaign”( leading to an NLRB election) that they were launching, and that it wasn’t easy reaching workers who were spread out at two locations and often rely on email rather than face-to-face contacts.

Union negotiates for online workers

But only a few months after Phillips began the campaign the company agreed to talk, and the negotiations that followed could bring Guild representation to many online workers. That would mean those workers “won't have to start from scratch with their own contract,” says Phillips, noting that getting employers to accept a first contract can be rough.

With the progress that's been made so far, Phillips' campaign is helping pave the way to bring union benefits and rights to the new online workforce.

“The grant allowed me to do something for the local that they wouldn’t have had the people and resources to do,” she says. Her organizing also helped workers on the print side understand “that it’s not so much ‘us vs. them,’ but that the work that online people do is much the same as theirs, only on different platforms.”

Noting that there are “so many other battles to fight,” Lesley Phillips hopes to continuing organizing.

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