Nearly 50 employees of the statewide, non-profit Maine Trust for Local News voted Monday to join the News Guild of Maine, bringing the total number of workers in the union to more than 200.
Megan Gray is the president of the News Guild of Maine, and an arts and culture reporter for the Portland Press Herald. She says this win at the National Labor Relations Board is the culmination of months of hard work to build solidarity and gain rights, and it happened because dozens of workers were asking for it.
"Because they were experiencing pay disparities and inequities across the company that felt more and more and more unfair," she said.
According to Gray, the News Guild of Maine already represented Maine Trust employees of the Portland Press Herald, the Morning Sentinel, and Kennebec Journal, and that those seeking to join were from the Sun Journal, the Times Record, and weeklies across southern and western Maine.
Gray says existing contracts with the Maine Trust for Local News expire at the end of the year, and the union's next step will be to negotiate a contract for all workers that "reflects who we are today, and who we want to be in the future providing journalism to Mainers."
