William Schurgin Quoted in Editor & Publisher Magazine
"New Law Would Encourage Unionizing"

William Schurgin was quoted in the April 1, 2009 article, "New Law Would Encourage Unionizing," published in Editor & Publisher Magazine. The article reported on how the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would affect newspaper companies. Bill noted that should EFCA pass, "Unions no longer have to go through an election campaign." He further noted, "If they can simply get the majority of the people to sign union authorization cards, they can organize them without the time or expense of a campaign." Bill pointed out that newspapers are more vulnerable because it is seemingly impossible to ship the core operations of a local paper overseas, as manufacturers can. For example, he explained, "Think about a small newspaper that has a loading dock with a handful of employees.... If there are 10 employees on that loading dock, and the [union organizer] got six of them to sign union authorization cards, they could organize those 10 employees."

According to Bill, small papers should take a kind of "physical" to gauge how vulnerable they would be to unionization under EFCA. He suggested that they should be aware of how engaged employees are in their work, and understand that layoffs, wage freezes and benefit reductions "are all types of issues that could lead to an employee looking to the outside for someone to represent them." Bill pointed out that smaller papers should also be aware that their employee handbooks could leave them vulnerable to labor law violations, even without EFCA. He concluded, "If a newspaper has a confidentiality policy that could be interpreted -- doesn't necessarily even have to say -- to impose some limitation on the employees' ability to discuss salaries and terms and conditions of employment… that could be enough to be found in violation of the National Labor Relations Act."