The membership of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild elects nine activists to its Executive Council every two years.
These “localwide” positions are the four officers: President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary; and five At-Large Delegates.
Nominations for the localwide seats on the local board will be taken at the last General Membership meeting of 2016, on Saturday, Nov. 5, at WBNG headquarters, 1225 Eye Street NW (Suite 300) in Washington. The meeting will begin at 10 a.m.
There are 17 other positions on the WBNG council. Eight seats automatically belong to the unit chairs at shops with more than 50 members: AFL-CIO, American Nurses Association, Baltimore Sun, Bloomberg-BNA, Casa of Maryland, Radio Free Asia, UFCW, and Washington Post. Under the WBNG bylaws, the 200-member-plus Post and Bloomberg-BNA units each get an additional delegate.
The remaining seven positions on the board are drawn from what is known as the “Small Units” unit. This “unit” comprises about 350 members from WBNG’s 18 small shops and about 30 members of the local who pay dues to the local even though they do not work for an employer with a Guild-negotiated collective bargaining agreement. The small-shops unit gets one delegate to the Executive Council for each 50 members in good standing from the combined membership total.
The Small Units “unit” holds a meeting every two years to elect representatives to the incoming board. Previous meetings have been held within a few weeks of the localwide WBNG election.