Guild Unit at Center for Popular Democracy Wins First CBA

The three-dozen member WBNG unit at the Center for Popular Democracy has its first Guild contract, a three-year agreement ratified Feb. 17 by a unanimous vote.

“The CBA includes significant advances for Guild members,” said Local Representative Rick Ehrmann. “There’s a union-shop clause, grievance and arbitration procedures, annual pay-equity evaluations, cost-of-living adjustments, and paid family leave.”

The agreement also features a stipulation limiting executive pay, Ehrmann said. Under Article 22, Section 3, “the highest paid employee of the organization shall not receive a salary exceeding three times the upper salary cap for initial salary offers” to bargaining-unit employees.

The contract at WBNG’s newest unit is retroactive to Jan. 1, and expires the first day of 2020. The agreement with the progressive nonprofit is the culmination of an organizing campaign that began in May. Guild organizing consultant Bruce Jett said signed representation cards were quickly collected from more than two-thirds of the employees in the proposed unit.

After an agreement was reached on bargaining-unit clarification, a voluntary recognition agreement was signed in early July. Formal bargaining began in September.

Six of the bargaining unit’s workers are in the organization’s Dupont Circle office; 13 work out of its Brooklyn headquarters. The other members of the shop are scattered among offices of CPD partners nationwide, including in Los Angeles, Houston, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Philadelphia.

Unit members voted electronically on ratification, with a final count of 33 in favor and zero opposed. Pending a unit election, the bargaining committee members – Uyen Doan, Josue Guillen, Michelle Kilpatrick, Art Reyes, and Kimihel Tseggai – will serve as the new shop’s officers.