Dozens of workers at the Maine Trust for Local News, the state’s largest network of newspapers, have voted to join the News Guild of Maine.
The move will bring into the union about 50 reporters, photographers, copy editors, designers, advertising representatives and business staff at the Lewiston Sun Journal, The Times Record in Brunswick, and weekly newspapers and newsletters in southern and western Maine.
Thirty-four of the 35 workers who cast ballots voted in favor of representation by the News Guild of Maine, the union confirmed Monday afternoon after representatives from the National Labor Relations Board tallied the votes.
Fourteen of the workers who received ballots did not cast a vote. Ballots were mailed to eligible workers on Sept. 8 and had to arrive at NLRB offices by Friday.
Roughly 160 employees of the Maine Trust, the parent company of the Portland Press Herald, Sun Journal, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, already are represented by a union — the largest of them being the News Guild, which includes multiple departments at the Press Herald and the newsroom of the Morning Sentinel.
The 49 previously unrepresented workers now get a legal protection known as status quo, in which the company cannot legally change many of the employees’ working conditions without bargaining. The guild hopes to begin bargaining a new contract with the Maine Trust in October, said Megan Gray, the president of the News Guild of Maine and an arts and culture reporter at the Press Herald.
Advertisement
“Today’s vote count confirms what we already knew: Our coworkers want to join the News Guild of Maine. They want to have the same voice and the same bargaining power as their peers across the company. Today, they won those rights in a landslide,” Gray said in a written statement.
In August, guild members launched a campaign to bring the previously unrepresented workers into the union. Several employees said at the time that they were concerned about pay disparity and job security in the wake of March layoffs that eliminated 50 jobs in print production, distribution and advertising.
“We congratulate our employees on today’s outcome,” Maine Trust managing director Stefanie Manning said in a written statement Monday afternoon. “The Maine Trust for Local News’ success depends on a collaborative, forward-thinking relationship with our represented employees. We look forward to working together to secure the future of local news in our Maine communities.”