Category: Featured

Unionized newsroom staff at Embarcadero Media Foundation, a Silicon Valley-based media nonprofit, have won their first contract in a deal that gives members higher salaries and a pay scale that compensates workers for prior experience, improved healthcare benefits and job protections. 

Embarcadero Community News Guild, which represents 20 reporters, editors, designers and photo staff, overwhelmingly voted to ratify their three-year contract on Oct. 8. Signed on the eve of the three-year anniversary of the union’s voluntary recognition, the deal follows nearly a year and a half of negotiations. 

“This deal is the result of countless hours of work from former and current members and staff at Pacific Media Workers Guild, and we’re proud to see these long sought-after benefits and protections being implemented for our newsroom,” said Julia Brown, Embarcadero Community News Guild chair and a member of the union’s bargaining committee.

Members of the CommonWealth Beacon Guild are thrilled that MassINC, the nonprofit that publishes CommonWealth Beacon, announced that it has officially awarded the union voluntary recognition. 

Management informed the Guild on Friday morning following a vote by MassINC’s Board of Directors. All parties involved can now move forward to bargaining over a fair contract in a spirit of collaboration and good faith. 

“This is the exact outcome for which we were hoping,” said Chris Lisinski, a senior reporter at CommonWealth Beacon. “We’re honored that MassINC recognizes the hard work of our newsroom and our desire to collectively bargain to make it an even better place, both for ourselves and for all future employees.” 

TUCSON, Ariz. – Journalists at the Arizona Daily Star announced Thursday, Oct. 15, their intention to form a union with The NewsGuild-CWA and are calling on USA TODAY Co. to voluntarily recognize their union.

The announcement follows USA TODAY Co.’s September 2026 acquisition of the Arizona Daily Star from Lee Enterprises, ending the companies’ longstanding joint operating agreement. 

As the newspaper begins a new chapter under USA TODAY Co.’s ownership, the Star’s reporters, photographers and copy editors are calling on their new parent company to demonstrate its stated commitment to local journalism by respecting employees’ collective voice and voluntarily recognizing their union.

The NewsGuild-CWA today joined an emergency petition to the Federal Communications Commission demanding a freeze to a recent illegal order that would lead to further media consolidation.

Under legislation approved by Congress over 20 years ago, television station owners are currently prohibited from reaching over 39% of the U.S. national audience. When the FCC repealed that rule on October 1, it violated the law and that Congressional mandate. 

The FCC’s recent order would effectively allow conglomerates and even monopolies to dominate the broadcast landscape. The petition filed by The NewsGuild-CWA and others notifies the FCC of a forthcoming legal challenge to the repeal. 

“Consolidation is the main reason we have lost tens of thousands of journalism jobs in the past two decades,” said NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss. “Media workers and the public lose out when news organizations merge into conglomerates. The FCC’s disregard for the law will inevitably lead to more job losses, less informed local communities and increased costs for every American.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s former owners hit a dead end and must pay back millions to journalists. We won at the Supreme Court. 

Our union hasn’t been able to say those words very much over our 93-year history. 

But we’re saying them this week after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up management’s appeal of our victory at the appellate court. 

This whole saga has been going on for years, and so I wrote up a “mini” timeline:

Close to 30 Guild leaders got together this past weekend for the New Local Officers Seminar (NLOS), which hadn’t been held since 2019. The seminar was created in 1982 to train local officers recently elected to their positions. 

Over four days, participants learned and shared their experiences on leadership, organizing, bargaining, representation and communications. They dove into the role of local leaders, discussed burnout and learned more about the Guild’s Learn, Do, Teach framework to build capacity. The seminar covered the role of stewards, contract and rights enforcement and an overview of bargaining processes. Attendees also joined sessions on how to build an organizing structure and union communications.

Unionized workers of The Lever have ratified their first collective bargaining agreement since affiliating with the Denver Newspaper Guild-CWA, Local 37074. The agreement covers eight workers and strengthens protections from the previous contract, ratified when The Lever Union was an independent union. That includes a shorter probationary period for new employees; more robust healthcare coverage, including full dental and vision coverage; expanded severance; and a CBA signing bonus. It follows six months of organizing and negotiations.

“This deal is a testament to the hard work of our members, and we’re thrilled to have reached a deal for an even stronger contract with The Lever’s management,” said Natalie Bettendorf, Lever podcast producer and member of the union’s bargaining committee.

PITTSBURGH – Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s appeal of a ruling requiring the company to pay back its workers—members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh (TNG-CWA Local 38061)—for the cuts to pay, illegally implemented increases in health care costs, and other unilateral changes to their working conditions.

Millions of dollars are owed to current and former PG employees. And the PG has no further venue for appeal.

“I’ve actually lost count of the number of agencies, judges, courts, and other authorities that have told the Blocks that the workers were right and the multi-millionaires were wrong. Our members were the first to tell them—more than nine years ago now,” said Jon Schleuss, President of The NewsGuild-CWA. “It’s staggering to think how much money and time the company wasted on losing when that could have been spent on dignified working conditions and improving the caliber of local journalism. The Block family’s efforts to delay accountability are finished. We look forward to seeing justice served so that our award-winning journalists can continue to focus on holding power to account.”

To our readers—

We’re happy to share some good news: after a series of bargaining meetings concluding in September, the Current Affairs staff union has ratified and signed a new contract with the magazine, covering the next two years. 

We’re represented by the Chicago News Guild, Local 34071, an affiliate of the The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America (TNG-CWA), and this contract gives Current Affairs workers a number of important protections and benefits. We’re proud of what we were able to secure through collective bargaining, and hope this contract will become a useful standard for workers at other media organizations who are considering unionization. 

Among the major provisions of the new contract are:

• A strong anti-AI policy, prohibiting the use of generative AI to write articles or create art for the magazine. 
• Ownership of our intellectual property, meaning that workers retain the copyright to the writing and art they create. 
• Three weeks days of paid time off (PTO).
• Unlimited sick days, so workers can seek medical care without worrying about counting their leave. 
• 10 weeks of fully paid parental leave.
• “Just cause” employment protections, giving workers greater job security. 
• A cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to wages, helping ensure that pay keeps pace with rising inflation.
• A worker representative on the Current Affairs board of directors.

Contact: dhnewsguild@gmail.com

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL – On Thursday, Oct. 1, Daily Herald journalists elected to form the Daily Herald News Guild by an overwhelming vote of 15-0.

Authorized observers from the union and management witnessed the counting of ballots unsealed at the offices of the National Labor Relations Board at the Dirksen Federal Building in downtown Chicago.

The secret ballot election was conducted via U.S. mail after newspaper owner Alden Global Capital/Tribune Publishing refused to voluntarily recognize the union. All 20 union eligible journalists had signed cards in support of organizing in late August.

The Guild will officially be certified within a week of the vote tally.