Journalists at the nonprofit newsroom Spotlight PA ratified their first collective bargaining agreement, winning solid minimums, a 3% annual increase each year, a $750 ratification bonus, a grievance and arbitration policy, protections like just cause, guaranteed retirement contributions and a lot more.
Other highlights include:
- $60,000 minimum salary floor, with most employees earning above that.
- Employer coverage 80% of healthcare costs for family plans, creating equity with individual plans
- 10 weeks of paid family and medical leave available to birthing and non-birthing parents
- Two additional holidays for cultural or religious observances (e.g., Jewish holidays, Diwali, Lunar New Year) in addition to the regular holiday schedule.
- Just cause protections and jurisdiction over work
“Spotlight PA can be the model for other newsrooms that you don’t have to be so acrimonious towards unions,” said Danielle Ohl, an investigative reporter and the unit chair. She said that the nonprofit’s leaders and the journalists had the same goal: to produce high-quality journalism. “For our newsroom, that involves accountability for elected politicians and a public service for our readers.”
Ohl helped organize the journalists at The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Md., and they formed the Chesapeake News Guild in 2018. Tribune, which owned the paper at the time, sold out to Alden Global Capital and both companies dragged on negotiations for years.
“For years I was at a table that made me feel worthless and unheard in negotiations that were going nowhere,” Ohl said about bargaining in other newsrooms. “The way our bargaining team worked with Spotlight was really productive and could be a model going forward.”
“I think this is an example of how unionized newsrooms are a good thing and something that can be acknowledged by both the workers and the management as a good thing,” Ohl said.
In contrast, hedge-fund owned newsrooms have cut newsroom budgets and staff, showing little regard for the value of journalism. In November, journalists at the Chicago Tribune won a first contract with Alden Global Capital after six long years of bargaining.
“Hedge fund owners who have stripped the assets of newspapers they have invested in should take heed of this deal,” said Diane Mastrull, president of the NewsGuild of Philadelphia and sector chairperson of The NewsGuild-CWA.
“Essential to a free press that can fulfill society’s expectations of watchdog journalists is ensuring that those journalists can afford to stay in the profession,” Mastrull said. “I’m thrilled that this nonprofit’s view of Spotlight PA’s journalists is that they are assets to be valued.”
Spotlight PA journalists unionized alongside a wave of other journalists at nonprofits in recent years including ProPublica, The Marshall Project, the Salt Lake Tribune, Wisconsin Watch and others.