Contact: Amanda Del Cid Lugo
EMAIL mandadc94@aol.com
Citing unanimous support, the staff of Los Angeles Public Press on Thursday launched a union campaign. Within an hour of the staff’s announcement, newsroom management agreed to voluntarily recognize the union.
The LA Public Press Union, a unit of Media Guild of the West, would represent eight employees. MGW, the Los Angeles-based Local of The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, represents hundreds of other journalists at the L.A. Times, the Arizona Republic, the Dallas Morning News and other news outlets in Southern California, Arizona and Texas.
“We are forming the LA Public Press Union with the hope of strengthening our workplace culture and ensuring that all staff receive adequate and fair protection, support, and compensation,” workers wrote in their mission statement.
The nonprofit LA Public Press launched in December 2022 with a commitment to provide independent, original local reporting. Its digital audience reaches millions of users.
“Our following is growing, we’re getting more financial support and we’re hiring more people,” said LAPP reporter and union member Phoenix Tso. “Safeguarding our mission and making sure the staff is taken care of is more important than ever. This is the moment to unionize.”
“It’s important to maintain a working relationship between our publisher, managers/team leads, and staff to ensure that the staff’s needs are being met and our work is valued,” said Ashley Orona, LAPP reporter and union member. “Especially now that our organization is growing.”
“We are optimistic about what unionizing will mean for our team at present and in the future,” said LAPP audience engagement editor and union member Virali Dave. “We are hopeful this will create more space for proactive problem solving and communication, and that it will ultimately create a team environment that helps us meet our goals with more compassion, clarity, and safety.”
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Media Guild of the West, TNG-CWA Local 39213, represents more than 800 media workers in Southern California, Arizona and Texas. The NewsGuild-CWA represents more than 27,000 journalists and other news industry employees in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.