The News Media Guild, formerly known as the Wire Service Guild, is local union

Local union

A local union, often shortened to local, in North America, or a union branch in the United Kingdom and other countries is a locally-based trade union organization which forms part of a larger, usually national, union.Local branches are organized to represent the union's members from a particular...

 31222 of The Newspaper Guild, which is a sector of the Communications Workers of America

Communications Workers of America

Communications Workers of America is the largest communications and media labor union in the United States representing about 550,000 members in both the private and public sectors. The union has 27 locals in Canada via CWA-SCA Canada representing about 8,000 members...

.

Most of its members are employees of The Associated Press

Associated Press

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

, where the union represents reporters, editors, photographers, broadcast staff, payroll clerks and computer technicians. It also represents employees of United Press International

United Press International

United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...

 and the EFE

EFE

EFE is a Spanish news agency created in 1939 by Spain's former minister of the press and propaganda Ramón Serrano Súñer and Manuel Aznar Zubigaray....

news agency in the United States.

History

The national local was founded in 1958, but its roots extend back to the 1940s. The subject of organizing workers at AP was the subject of a case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Associated Press v N.L.R.B, 301 U.S. 103), which held that the First Amendment did not give media employers immunity from labor laws. That case involved an editorial worker who edited and rewrote news copy.