PAGE 8 | October 18, 2019 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
UNION ORGANIZING
All across the Columbian newsroom, workers are displaying union posters.
Union vote scheduled at
The Columbian newspaper
By Don McIntosh
A group of 28 news department
workers at The Columbian daily
newspaper in Vancouver will
vote Oct. 31 on whether to
unionize with the Pacific North-
west Newspaper Guild, a local
affiliate of NewsGuild-CWA.
Management at the family-
owned paper isn’t mounting the
kind of scorched-earth anti-
union campaign that some em-
ployers use, but is making it
clear they hope employees will
vote no.
“There is nothing a labor
union can get you that you can’t
get on your own,” owner and
publisher Scott Campbell wrote
in an Oct. 1 letter to workers.
“Labor unions put a wedge be-
tween management and employ-
ees. Instead of all being on the
same team, there are two teams.
Us and them. This is not what I
want for our culture.”
“The most disappointing thing
about all this is that nobody at the
company has said, ‘Hey, we un-
derstand there are issues here that
need to be addressed,’” says
union organizing committee
spokesperson Nathan Howard, a
photographer at the newspaper.
Howard said union support is
holding steady and even growing
in the face of management’s re-
action. Meanwhile, union sup-
porters intend to keep their cam-
paign positive.
Backed by the Southwest
Washington Central Labor
Council, the union is asking
members of the public to sign a
pledge saying they’ll subscribe to
The Columbian if it goes union.
[You can sign the pledge at
bit.ly/325qViR]
The plan was hatched after a
delegation to an Oct. 2 meeting
of the Southwest Washington
Central Labor Council got a
standing ovation from delegates
and offers of support.
“The hope here is that when
the newspaper gets on the same
level with the community, with
the support of the labor commu-
nity that we have here, there are
financial benefits,” Howard said.
“UNIONS HAVE BEEN THE ONLY POWERFUL AND
EFFECTIVE VOICE WORKING PEOPLE HAVE EVER
HAD IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY.”
— BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
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