By Martha Waggoner, Guild International Chair

It’s a big accomplishment to get a first contract, as four recently organized units within The NewsGuild-CWA have done.

But to get contract language that’s rare, if not unprecedented within TNG, well, that’s cause for even more of a reason for celebration.

The contracts for units at Gatehouse newspapers in Springfield and Rockford in Illinois, and at Lakeland and Sarasota in Florida, include language that protect the beats of female reporters when they return from maternity leave. The language says not only do the women return to work, but they also return to their same beats.

The language came from bargaining at Springfield, where the local’s bargaining team noticed that some women were assigned less prestigious beats when they returned from maternity leave. One reporter had burst into tears in the newsroom when she learned she was pregnant because she had seen a colleague lose her beat after her pregnancy.

So the team dug in and insisted on the language. Shannon Duffy, administrative officer of United Media Guild, which represents the two Illinois units, said the victory shows the importance of having a diverse bargaining team. Some of the male negotiators might have considered trading the maternity/beat language for a bigger bump in salary or a couple of vacation days, he said. But the women in the newsroom made it clear that the language was non-negotiable.

The language reads: “An employee returning from maternity leave shall be reinstated into the specific reporting position that she held prior to going on leave, at the salary she would have received had her employment with the employer been continuous and will earn full credit toward severance pay accrual, experience rating, and other length of service benefits” subject to several provisions.

Those provisions include that staffing levels have remained unchanged during the reporter’s maternity leave and/or specified reporting responsibilities haven’t changed for other staffers, except to accommodate the maternity leave.

After Springfield got the language, it became part of the contracts in Rockford and the two Florida units.

All four contracts include just cause, grievance and arbitration, a layoff process, enhanced severance and dues check-off. TNG leaders believe these are solid first contracts, providing Guild members with a solid foundation to build on in future negotiations.