Workers at the Evansville Courier & Press in southwestern Indiana won their union certification election. On February 8, every member of the nine-person unit voted in favor of unionization, becoming the latest Gannett newsroom to form a union.
“We’ve remained firmly united since the beginning here in Evansville, and I believe the unanimous vote illustrates that,” said Sarah Loesch, a government reporter at the Courier & Press.
“We’re now looking forward to getting to the bargaining table and putting in the work there.”
The Evansville News Guild received messages of solidarity from their fellow Local 34070 comrades at the Indianapolis Newspaper Guild.
Journalists at the Courier & Press signed union cards on January 9, and asked management to voluntarily recognize their union. The union was formed in response to slashes resources, jobs, and the need for a more democratic workplace where journalists have a seat at the table.
Since Gannett bought the newspaper in 2016, the Courier & Press newsroom is a fraction of its former size — but the care and effort shown by the remaining reporters and photographers has not wavered.
About 50 newsrooms at Gannett, the largest owner of newspapers in the U.S., are unionized, including the Arizona Republic, Detroit Free Press, the Palm Beach Post, the Erie Times-News and many more. More than 600 journalists from 17 Gannett newsrooms have unionized with The NewsGuild-CWA since 2019.
The hundreds of unionizing Gannett journalists joined a wave of journalists organizing since 2019, with more than 5,600 media workers joining The NewsGuild-CWA from more than 100 workplaces.