Compiled by GayToday

Washington, D.C.--Nearly 1,000 participants in Sunday's Capital Pride Festival here signed petitions supporting the efforts of Washington Blade staffers to organize a union without opposition from the newspaper's new corporate owners.

The petition’s signers, said to include prominent members of the gay community, expressed surprise, disappointment and anger after being told that Blade management is attempting to prevent union representation.

Hundreds of supporters at the gay pride festival sported red-and-white "I Support the Blade Workers" stickers and took copies of the first issue of one-page The Blade Voice, published by Blade employees seeking unionization.

After Mr. Waybourn had rejected a third-party check of employee-signed Newspaper Guild cards, the Guild filed a petition for a union representation election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB has scheduled a hearing for June 15, but the labor board may grant the company’s lawyers’ request for a delay.

At the hearing, the board will determine which Blade employees are eligible for union representation, after which it will set a date for a secret ballot election among those employees. Guild cards were signed by a substantial majority of the 18 employees the Guild believes eligible for union representation.

The Washington Blade was first published here in 1969 as a one-page mimeographed, volunteer effort. Although it is now owned by Window Media--whose ownership of gay-oriented publications in four other cities makes it the nation's largest gay media conglomerate--Blade staffers say they hope to maintain the paper's community orientation.

The petitions were circulated at the festival by Blade staffers and by members of Pride at Work, a gay membership organization supported by the AFL-CIO and composed of union and would-be union workers. Signed by 957 festival-goers, the petition reads:

"As a reader of the Washington Blade, I want to express my concern for window Media's treatment of the Blade employees during their attempt to organize a union and have a voice in the new corporate structure. Window Media has recently purchased the Washington Blade, which has been a community institution since 1969. Window Media is now the largest gay media conglomeration in the country. I believe the employees are acting within their legal rights and attempting to secure their position as unbiased reporters, loyal workers and voices of the local community through means of organizing with the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. I am asking that Window Media recognize the collective voices of my community newspaper's employees."