Human Rights and Equity Conference Update
By: Scott Stephens, Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild
 
LAS VEGAS – The TNG-CWA Human Rights and Equity Committee returned to the city of its birth this summer and staged the union’s first-ever equity conference.
 
The daylong gathering, which took place at the Las Vegas Hilton before the start of this year’s CWA Convention, attracted more than 50 Guild activists.
 
They were exposed to a wide-ranging menu of topics related to equity and diversity issues in the workplace, the union and the community. Issues included the future of jobs in the industry, the impact of economics on equity-seeking groups, the affect of technology on diversity and reaching out to young people.
 
The event, which took eight months to plan, was conceived and carried out by the committee, a standing, rank-and-file panel established at the 2006 Sector Conference in Las Vegas.
 
Its mission: to increase participation by equity-seeking groups at all levels of the union.
 
“Diversity is everyone’s job,” said committee member Yoko Kuramoto-Eidsmoe of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild. “It’s part of what we all do as a union.”
 
The conference marked the first time the Guild has held a large-scale event around diversity and human rights issues. Activists expressed confidence it represented a turning point.
 
“There was a time in the Guild when we were not pushing this issue forward,” said TNG President Bernie Lunzer.
 
The day began with remarks from the four people holding diversity seats on the CWA Executive Board, all of whom were seeking reelection.
 
That was followed by a sobering statistical analysis by C. Jeffrey Waddoups, an economics professor at the University of Nevada. Waddoups said union membership in the U.S. now stands where it did 80 years ago on the eve of the Great Depression.
 
He documented how the demise of union membership has paralleled a radical re-distribution of wealth that has put more and more money into the pockets of the very richest citizens.
 
“The very top is getting the lion’s share of the new productivity growth,” Waddoups said, adding that equity-seeking groups are, historically, the most affected by the change.
 
Equally grim was Liza Gross’ take on the future of industry jobs. Gross, managing editor for presentation and operations at the Miami Herald, arrived in Las Vegas fresh from a round of layoffs at her paper.
 
“I’ve had to tell people this week that they were losing their jobs,” Gross said. “It’s been a very, very rough week.”
 
Gross said newspapers need to adapt to changing times and realize that the traditional delivery system of news is obsolete. She said journalists need to develop new skills to survive.
 
But she also acknowledged that the industry was “abysmally short” of realizing diversity goals, and admitted that it’s unlikely the picture will improve in the face of layoffs.
 
“This is not a stable environment we find ourselves in right now,” she said.
 
More optimistic was the development of emerging  technologies that will give greater inclusion to people with disabilities and members of other equity seeking groups.   
 
Inclusion should mean more than simply accessibility to  technology, said Laurie McArthur, director of the Adaptive Technology Resources Centre at the University of Toronto.
 
“People with disabilities should be producers, and not just consumers, of information,” she said.
 
Saron Ghebressellassie, 21, a member of the Canadian Federation of Students and a student at Ryerson University in Toronto, reminded the conference that many of the world’s greatest movements – from civil rights to anti-war – were lead by young people. But students are less likely to belong to labor unions and more likely to work at low-paying jobs, she said.
 
That means it’s vital for Guild members to reach out to new  members when they join the bargaining unit, said committee chairman Michael D’Souza of the Canadian Media Guild.
 
“Many need things like dental care and haven’t had it because they’ve been at university,” D’Souza said.
 
Conference participants ended the day by meeting in small groups and coming up with ideas to take back to their locals. Those ideas ranged from establishing speaker bureaus to making web sites accessible to sight-impaired members.
 
While committee members said they don’t rule out future conference, their ultimate goal is to diversify the Guild to a point where their work is no longer necessary.
 
“My hope for the committee is that it will become extinct in a few years,” said committee member Randye Gilliam of the Newspaper Guild of New York.