A Letter from your Michigan Local President

I hope all of you are doing well and have been enjoying this break we’ve received in winter weather.

March is Women’s History Month and we recently celebrated International Women’s Day on March 8. In keeping with those themes, I want to highlight four incredible women that we are lucky to have in the Michigan Local. They are our shop stewards at our TV and radio broadcast stations:

• Patty Handysides – Bell Media and Windsor. Patty has been on-air at CKLW for more than 30 years as a DJ, show host, news reporter and anchor. In her free time, she designs and supervises fireworks shows and was formerly the president of the Ontario Wine Society’s Windsor-Essex Chapter.

• Vickie Thomas – WWJ News Radio 950. Vickie has been at WWJ since 1991 and is the station’s city beat reporter. She was instrumental in organizing WWJ into a union shop. Vickie was formerly president of the Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and was a 2019 inductee into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.

• Karen “KT” Trombley  – WWJ News Radio 950. KT has been broadcasting on-air for almost 20 years. She can be heard daily on the radio, helping metro Detroiters navigate the roads as a traffic reporter. In addition to her shop steward role, KT served as a member of the Michigan Local Election Committee in 2019 and participated in the most recent negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and Entercom for the three-year contract covering broadcasters who produce and anchor traffic reports.  

• Amy Lange – Fox 2 Detroit broadcaster and Michigan Local representative on the SAG-AFTRA Broadcast Steering Committee. Amy has been an anchor and reporter with Fox 2 in Detroit since 1998. She has won multiple Emmy awards throughout her career, including one for her series on a Haitian orphanage dealing with the aftermath of the country’s 2010 earthquake. Amy holds a M.A. in social justice from Marygrove College.   

As president, I am so grateful for these four unionists who serve as our shop stewards. They freely give their time and talents to serve their fellow broadcast members, and are the first point of contact when a member at one of the stations has an issue. Our members feel so supported knowing they can go to Patty, Vickie, Karen and Amy with any issue and it will be heard. I personally want to thank them for their hard work and dedication. The Michigan Local is better off as a result of them!

In solidarity,

Eric Wydra
Michigan Local President