Author: Jon Schleuss

On Wednesday June 24 staff at High Country News (“HCN”) based in Colorado ratified their first collective bargaining agreement after unionizing in early 2024. The agreement covers 13 workers including writers, editors, photographers, customer service specialists, membership development managers, finance and payroll employees and more. 

It’s been a minute since my last newsletter because we’re down a comms coordinator (scroll to apply!) and I’ve also been traveling the world for our union. More on those trips at the bottom because there’s more interesting member news up top. Happy Friday! I hope you’re about to have a good restful weekend. 

And, if you’re thinking, “Jon this is a lot to read!” I bolded all the important stuff! You can also just look at the pictures. Let’s dive in. 

Last week all seven journalists at the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pa. asked local management to voluntarily recognize their union after McClatchy, the newspaper’s owner, began placing journalists’ bylines on stories written by artificial intelligence.

McClatchy agreed to have an independent party review the union cards signed by workers and compare that to staff lists. Six McClatchy newsrooms have unionized in as many years and each one was voluntarily recognized by the company. 

I’m traveling to Ottawa this week to attend the CWA Canada National Representative Council meeting. As The NewsGuild-CWA president, I’m a member of the council and am excited to hear from local leaders across Canada on the issues they’re facing and solutions they’re coming up with together. There will also be elections for several CWA Canada officer positions, including the treasurer and secretary. 

ProPublica workers voted 92% to authorize a strike if management does not agree to a fair contract that includes job security protections, ethical guardrails around the use of AI and wage increases to keep up with the rising cost of living. 

Our members at The New York Times Guild are currently bargaining their next collective agreement. What happens in these negotiations will impact the rest of the news industry. 

On Wednesday, hundreds of workers at the Times, represented by The NewsGuild of New York, took part in an action flooding management’s inbox with emails outlining five major priorities in their contract fight. A big priority on that list: artificial intelligence, which is a critical issue in newsrooms right now, from ProPublica to the 50 unionized newsrooms at Gannett, now known as USA Today Co. 

Our detained member’s son was at the State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. last night. Rep. Ilhan Omar from Minnesota invited Gerardo Orozco Guzman, the son of Eustaquio “Paco” Orozco Verdusco, our member who was detained by U.S. immigration officers in January. Paco’s family is raising money to support the legal fees, daily expenses, support for his family to travel to visit him in detention in New Mexico and ongoing care for the family. You can support Paco and his family by donating here.

The state of New York opened applications for tax credits supporting journalism jobs on Tuesday. The state was the first in the United States to pass a journalism jobs tax credit in 2024. The Albany Newspaper Guild (TNG-CWA Local 31034) successfully pushed for the legislation alongside support from other New York locals and the Communications Workers of America.