Despite layoffs, San Jose Guild rallies for quality and unity *

More than 100 members of the San Jose Newspaper Guild’s Mercury News unit rallied in front of the newspaper Friday to show their support for laid-off workers – and their resolve to defend editorial quality against shortsighted corporate cost cuts.

The Guild members wore black to express not only sadness about the loss of so many valued colleagues but mourning at the damage being done to what has long been regarded as one of the best newspapers in the West.

“We will be a lesser paper after this,” Sylvia Ulloa, a Mercury News news designer and president of the San Jose local, told her coworkers.

But she said Guild members are determined to move past the grief to a new commitment to build more union power. “We need to show the company we’re united, and not intimidated,” she said. “We must organize. We must mobilize.”

* Link updated