Last month I told you that one of our members was abducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We didn’t share his name at the time in order to protect him and his family. But now his family is public.
His name is Eustaquio Orozco Verdusco and he’s a father, husband and union steward at the Minnesota Newspaper & Communications Guild. He’s known to many as “Paco” and is an organizer at Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha (CTUL), a nonprofit worker center based in Minneapolis.
Eustaquio was profiled by Sarah Lazare for In These Times and Workday Magazine. He’s a former construction worker now turned activist, fighting against wage theft and labor trafficking. He’s now locked in a detention camp in New Mexico after being arrested by federal agents.
“As part of his collective work around wage theft over the years, people have been able to recover over $6 million in stolen wages, and he’s been one of the core leaders in driving and making that happen,” said CTUL’s co-director Merle Payne in an interview.
We join Paco’s family, friends, coworkers and fellow members in calling for his immediate release. The best thing you can do is donate to support his family and his legal fight.
ProPublica workers are ready to strike to win the contract they deserve – one that includes real job security, strong guardrails around AI and fair wages.
This week, Guild members practiced picketing outside ProPublica offices in multiple cities to show management they’re serious about doing whatever it takes to secure a fair contract.
You can stand with them by donating to their strike fund and signing the petition demanding ProPublica agree to real job protections now.
The Washington Post laid off more than 300 workers earlier this month, decimating several desks including sports, audio, climate, books, international, local and more. It is shameful when owner Jeff Bezos at the same time spent $75 million to purchase and promote a documentary about the First Lady.
I’m sure you’ve seen posts from so many journalists and others impacted by these brutal and unnecessary cuts. Bezos could support the Post and run it at a loss indefinitely with all of his wealth. The loss of subscribers is his fault, not the hardworking journalists who were let go or the journalists and other workers who remain.
Hundreds of supporters and members rallied in front of the Post the day after the layoffs were announced. I told the crowd that Bezos made intentional decisions here. Bezos hired Will Lewis, who’s under review by Scotland Yard over his involvement in the coverup of the phone-hacking of the British royal family when he worked for Rupert Murdoch.
Bezos made the intentional decision to pull a pre-written endorsement of Kamala Harris 11 days before the 2024 election, causing a quarter of a million readers to cancel their subscription.
Bezos made the intentional decision to lay off expecting parents, journalists getting care for ongoing health issues and journalists working in an active war zone.
And Bezos, along with CTO Vineet Khosla, are intentionally trying to illegally terminate almost 80 members of the Post Tech Guild who are still fighting for a first contract. (Read more about how that’s illegal.)
Khosla published and then deleted a post on LinkedIn where he co-opted the #SaveThePost hashtag while saying he’s one of the ones actually trying to save the Post. “This is despicable,” wrote the Post Tech Guild.
And what about Publisher Will Lewis? He’s now been sacked after appearing with celebrities at a red carpet event for the Super Bowl, instead of being with the newsroom while his lieutenants were destroying hundreds of jobs and upending our members’ lives.
“I’m glad Will Lewis has been fired. I wish it had happened before he fired all my friends,” said Katie Mettler, the former co-chair at the Washington Post Guild, in an interview with The New York Times.
You can support the Post folks by donating to two GoFundMe’s. One is for Post Guild folks impacted by the layoffs and the other is for international staffers who were also terminated.
About 40 journalists at The Columbus Dispatch voted to unionize, joining Guild Local 1. Workers voted 33-5 to unionize and are fighting for equitable pay, protections from layoffs and the future of journalism in central Ohio.
“For too long, Ohio’s greatest home newspaper has hemorrhaged great journalists due to short-sighted cuts by our corporate owner,” said Jordan Laird, a Dispatch news reporter. “Now, we’re taking some power back.”
Workers are calling on the USA TODAY Co., formerly Gannett, to immediately begin bargaining with the union. They are also demanding their employer cease blocking two of their colleagues from joining the union.
Alden Global Capital targeted the Daily News Union with layoffs cutting more than 25% of the unionized newsroom. The cuts are gutting the national desk and metro reporters and further hollowing out one of the country’s most storied papers. Executive Editor Andrew Julien cited a “highly competitive media landscape” as the reason for the layoffs.
“Alden Global Capital — the nation’s most predatory newspaper owner — has again lived up to its reputation as the parasitic ‘destroyer of newspapers,’” workers said in a statement, dubbing the layoffs a “Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
The Baltimore Sun Guild blasted management for filling the paper with AI slop, prompting reporters to protest it as an insult to journalism.
The paper published AI-generated “analysis” pieces that filled more than half a page of the paper and contained basic factual errors, twice referring to Trump as “former President Donald Trump.”
Journalists and other workers at the Albany Times Union protested outside the newsroom earlier this month. They’ve been fighting for a new collective agreement for years.
Gov. Kathy Hochul stopped by their line to offer support to our members who have gone 17 years without a contract. It was an amazing event organized in the bitter cold.
Our members at EFE delivered a petition to Spain’s Second Deputy Prime Minister last week, asking her to intervene and help stop the abusive intimidation of staff at Spain’s public news agency after they protested management’s decision to ignore a decade-old policy to promote from within.
They raised their concerns directly with Yolanda Díaz, who’s also the minister of labor, and shared a letter signed by every worker asking for the policy to remain intact.
“They tell us we can’t have the best of both the U.S. and Spain,” workers said. “We are not asking for privileges, but for dignity, basic labor rights, and democratic coherence from a public company.”
Workers at Education Week ratified their first contract, locking in benefits and improvements at the national nonprofit news organization. The 50-member bargaining unit, part of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, established a minimum salary, won 3% wage annual wage increases, secured a better work-life balance, additional holidays and a lot more. Congrats!
Congratulations to Jodi Green who’s the new Vice President for Region 5! Jodi was elected to fill a temporary vacancy in a meeting of The NewsGuild Executive Council last week. Jodi takes a spot left by Bill Baker, who was ineligible to continue serving after he was elected a salaried officer with The NewsGuild of New York. Bill was great on the council these last several years and we’re sad to lose him! But he’s New York’s gain! Jodi is the president of IAPE 1096, our local that represents workers at Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal.
Upcoming events:
We’re partnering with CWA District 6 to run a Know Your Rights town hall to learn lessons from Minneapolis. That’ll be at 8 p.m. ET February 25. Learn more about your rights on the job as a union member and as an individual if ICE shows up in your workplace, community or home. Register here.
The Guild is sponsoring a digital security training for journalists on Feb. 26 in the wake of a January raid on the home of Hannah Natanson, a Washington Post reporter and Guild member. The situation underscored the growing risks journalists face and the urgent need for stronger digital security.
The 90-minute training will start at 2 p.m. ET on February 26 and will be led by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. You can register for the training here.
Finally, we are hosting a Stewards Training on Feb. 19 at 8:30 p.m. ET where we will review the roles stewards play in our union and the best practices for having effective organizing conversations. Join us by registering here.
In solidarity,
Jon Schleuss
President
The NewsGuild-CWA