IMPACT: 31-Year-Old NewsGuild Reformer Beats Incumbent in Re-Run Election

By: Mike Elk December 10, 2019

In March, Payday Report broke the story of how incumbent NewsGuild President Bernie Lunzer planned to block more than 2,000 new members in recently organized units the from right to vote in the NewsGuild Presidential election.

Further reporting by Payday Report revealed that more than 2,000 current members weren’t sent ballots

The furor created by Payday’s reporting helped to create a public outrage over the election; leading to calls for a re-run election under threat of demands for the Department of Labor to get involved in the election.

Today, the re-run election was completed. Reformer 31-year-old LA Times organizer Jon Schleuss has defeated 61-year-old incumbent Bernie Lunzer by a margin of 1,979 to 1,514.

“This is an incredible day and I am over the moon,” wrote Scheluss on twitter. “It is extremely emotional for me to think that so many of you support our campaign. I believe in a more productive NewsGuild that better serves our members and I know that we can create it together.”

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About the Author

Mike Elk
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter who covered everything from Lula & the Brazilian labor movement to major league baseball. He spent years covering union organizing in the South for The Guardian and was labeled by the New York Times as an "abrasive gadfly" for exposing within the labor movement. Raised in a UE union family in Pittsburgh, Elk was illegally for union organizing at Politico in 2015 and used his NLRB settlement to start the crowd-funded Payday Report. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and is fluent in both Pittsburghese and Portuguese, which he learned when attending journalism school at PUC-Rio de Janerio. Email: [email protected]

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