The Pacific Media Workers Guild is proud to join the Press Democrat Guild in celebrating their newly ratified collective bargaining agreement. We share the following message on their behalf.

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After more than 9 months of negotiations, The Press Democrat Guild finally has a new contract! Our members voted, with nearly 98% in support, to ratify a 3-year agreement that guarantees raises for every member each year.

We successfully unionized the Petaluma Argus-Courier, Sonoma Index-Tribune and North Bay Business Journal, who joined our union and will now enjoy better pay and better protections.

We successfully guarded against company proposals that would have had a significant financial impact on our members, and instead secured a total of 6.5% raises over 3 years, preserved our healthcare premium costs and ensured our employer would still contribute to our 401k.

We also defended our jurisdiction, ensuring that the journalism produced by our publications will continue to be performed by union workers.

These contract victories came with impressive solidarity among our members, who spoke up and acted collectively – speaking with the community, advocating on social media and demonstrating their union pride with our Guild t-shirts.

Securing this contract and the terms that we fought hard for will help provide stability and hope for the future of our newsrooms. It will help us continue to do this work and preserve local news.

We are grateful for all the support we have received throughout this process. Thank you to readers, members of the community and other news guilds and unions across the United States who cheered us on!

We will enforce the contract we won and never stop fighting to make our newsrooms the best workplaces they can be. We will also continue to support our colleagues in newsrooms across the country as they fight for fair contracts. So keep following along for updates! #UnionStrong