Abstract

Since the 1960s, the unions representing newspaper workers in North America have confronted two interconnected forms of convergence that have dramatically altered the workplaces and the work of their members. Between them, corporate and technological convergence have transformed newspapers from community-based enterprises into minor holdings of massive empires, hollowed out the labour process and blurred the edges of previously distinct media forms. In response, the unions have undertaken a convergence of their own, transforming themselves through a series of mergers into unions that represent a broad spectrum of communications workers. This study, covering the period from the early 1960s to the late 1990s, focuses on The Newspaper Guild, the union of journalists and white-collar news workers, which merged with the Communications Workers of America in the mid-1990s. This act of convergence was accompanied by a parallel act of divergence/convergence, when a number of Canadian newsworkers' locals chose instead to join the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Convergence reached new levels within one of those locals, when Pacific Press consolidated its seven bargaining units into one. This study finds that while labour convergence remains a work in progress, the converged unions are in a stronger position to assert their claim as unions for the information age.