Not many of us have jobs that take us to Antarctica. Debby Zabarenko is one.
Zabarenko is the environment correspondent for the worldwide news service Reuters and covers a host of stories ranging from to environmental political activists—and she also serves as the chairwoman of the Reuters unit of and a Guild regional vice-president.
One of the most respected environmental journalists in the country, Zabarenko jokes that "journalism has been my way of prolonging adolescence well into middle age. You get to ask rude questions of people who are very powerful, and they have to answer. Then you get to write about them and tell what you learn.
"It's a great gig."
But while reporting is different from most other jobs, the journalists and technical staffers at Reuters, whose Guild unit includes more than 400 members around the country, share many of the same concerns as other union members.
For example, when the Reuters union negotiated its current contract, "job security was key, salary was key, benefits were key and we had to stop the erosion of our unit," Zabarenko recalls. "Reuters had consistently tried to cut little pockets of our members out of the union by reorganizing them or saying they were working for a different company. We tried to hold the line, and we did pretty well."
Today, Zabarenko routinely handles plenty of questions from members about working conditions. At the same time, she notes that she's in an "enviable position" for a unit chair because "one of the things I have to do on a daily basis is to remind members to take what they're entitled to have under the contract. We have staffers who are very committed to their jobs. I have to tell them to put in for the overtime they deserve."
The most complicated challenge Zabarenko and other Guild members at Reuters are dealing with right now is an issue that steelworkers, airline attendants, telephone operators and others also have had to confront: a corporate merger. In April, the Thomson Corp., a Canadian-owned media empire, completed its acquisition of Reuters and formed Thomson Reuters.
"As you can imagine, there's a lot of anxiety that goes along with that," Zabarenko says. "We know that the new company is looking for $750 million in 'synergies,' places where they can save money.
"Management has told us that there won't be any mandatory job cuts for employees who are covered by the Guild, but we're negotiating over buyouts for some of our members. My main duty is to communicate with our members so they're not in the dark."
Zabarenko has been a union member since she started as a reporter with the Associated Press some 27 years ago. "For years," she recalls, "I didn't give it a second thought. But I became a steward in 2000, and since then, I've become more convinced that the benefits you get are so worthwhile. So now my feeling is: Why wouldn't you belong to a union?
"I'm talking to folks at Thomson in the United States who have never been in a union. I tell them that the advantages include job security, getting paid for all the hours you work, benefits that can't be taken away, plus the simple fact that you're stronger when you join with other people. "There's every reason to join a union and no reason not to."
