April 1, 2005
The Guild is pleased to announce the opening of nominations for its annual award in honor of Tom Keenan, former Chairperson of the New York Times Guild unit, who died in December 2000, after a long battle with cancer.
Keenan was the Times Guild Unit Chair for seven terms, longer than any other individual, before joining Local 3’s staff in 1997 as a Local Representative. He became ill shortly after coming to work for the union.
He had also served on the Local’s Executive Committee for the second-longest period of any rank-and-file member in our 66-year history.
In 1999, Local 3’s Executive Committee created the Thomas M. Keenan Newspaper Guild of New York Service Award. It is presented each year to a member in good standing of the New York Local who is nominated by at least one other member in good standing, and is then selected, after a review process, by the New York Guild’s Administrative Committee: the President, Secretary-Treasurer, Chairperson, and the three Vice Presidents. Nominations may also include members who retired from a Guild job during the past year. However, the nomination must be made by a current member.
To determine who will win the award, the Committee must find that a nominee “has performed above and beyond the call of duty in service to the New York Local, and best exemplifies the ideals of a true labor leader, in the spirit of Tom Keenan.”
Nominations are open until April 15 at
*Nominations must be delivered to Local Secretary-Treasurer Bill O’Meara at the Newspaper Guild, 1501 Broadway, Suite 708, NYC, NY, 10036, by the deadline in order to be considered. The nominations may be made either by regular mail or by e-mail to Billom1@aol.com. Written nominations must be signed by the member(s) making the nomination. E-mails must come from a verifiable e-mail address belonging to the member making the nomination. No self-nominations, please.
Last year’s co-winners were New York Times Unit Chairperson Lena Williams and El Diario Unit Chairperson Oscar Hernandez.
This year’s prize will be presented at the next General Membership meeting, which will take place in June.
# # # # # # #
04/01/05