Ming Pao employees join CEP Local 87M media union. 

Ming Pao employees voted by a decisive 84 to 47 margin September 14th to join the CEP Local 87M media union, culminating a three-week open organizing drive aimed at improving wages, benefits and working conditions at the large, Toronto, Chinese-language, daily newspaper. Local 87-M now represents the three dominant Chinese language newspapers in the city, having also formed unions at Sing Tao Daily in 2000 and World Journal in 2006.

Beginning with an open organizing committee of four employees, from a broad range of departments at the newspaper,  the media union presented management with a letter announcing the drive to join the CEP 87M on Aug. 23. The committee quickly expanded to 12 members, reflecting widespread dissatisfaction at the Scarborough-based broadsheet publication. 

The campaign was marked by some of the strangest and dirtiest tactics ever seen in a Canadian newspaper union drive. During the first week of September for eg., a large part of the publication's front page was devoted to an attack on the union, angering editorial workers at the newspaper who work very hard to put out a professional publication about legitimate news events in Toronto, Canada and China.  

Local Representative Howard Law is taking the lead role in staff support for the Ming Pao Organizing Committee

 Staff were also offered large pay increases, retirement plans and other improvements in an attempt to stop the union drive. The company also compared their staffing levels to staffing at the unionized Sing Tao daily newspaper in a transparent attempt to scare employees.

But CEP Local 87M media union President Brad Honywill says threats and bribes didn't  work.

“The union has already shown its power by winning Ming Pao employees large pay increases and promises for other improvements,” said Honywill.

“Employees know that the promised improvements will never happen without the legal guarantee of a union contract. They know that the only way they'll have a real voice in their workplace is to form a union.”

CEP (Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union), is Canada’s largest media union. Local 87M, also known as the Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild (SONG), has already organized two other Chinese-language newspapers in Toronto, Sing Tao and World Journal.

Ming Pao is published by Ming Pao Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Media Chinese International Limited, which was formed by the merger of Ming Pao Enterprise Corporation Limited (Hong Kong), Sin Chew Media Corporations Berhad (Malaysia) and Nanyang Press Holdings Berhad (Malaysia) in April 2008.

Ming Pao Toronto has a circulation of about 158,000 and about 150 employees. Ming Pao Newspapers also has a successful Vancouver, B.C. publication.

CEP Local 87M represents about 3,000 members in 34 media workplaces across Ontario, including the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Toronto Sun, Ottawa Sun, London Free Press, Hamilton Spectator, Waterloo Region Record, Metroland and NOW Magazine.