In five days, we’ll be in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette management will be on the defendant’s side of the courtroom.
After 32 months on strike the company is facing two major issues: an enforcement order from the National Labor Relations Board and contempt charges from the NLRB for the company’s failure to follow a rare 10(e) injunction we won in March.
Both are scheduled in front of a panel of judges. It’ll be a major moment for our strike. About 10 of our strikers, several of our leaders, staff and myself are heading to Philadelphia to witness the proceedings as the NLRB makes its case for tens of thousands of dollars in fines against management, potential incarceration for bosses and the enforcement of a judgment we won last September.
Last week our strikers traveled to Mt. Lebanon, Pa. for labor journalist Kim Kelly’s newest book.
She recently published “Fight to Win! Heroes of American Labor,” which is written for younger readers, based on her book “Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor.”
She talked about her history of becoming a union activist as a journalist.
“If you can write pretty well, and you can read books, and you can talk to people, and you’re not a total total jerk, you can kind of figure it out,” she said as reported by our strikers. “Being a journalist is a working-class profession. It is a skill. It is something you learn and you figure out. You don’t have to go to school for that.”
Kelly invited our strikers to speak about the 32-month-long strike against the Post-Gazette and strikers presented her a PUP t-shirt.
Thank you, Kim, for covering the labor movement and standing with work people!
We helped to kill a potential restriction on U.S. states regulating AI in the vote-o-rama in the U.S. Senate this week. I submitted a letter to all senators asking them to oppose any effort to prohibit states from passing legislation to rein in artificial intelligence. Other Guild members also called their senators.
“The NewsGuild-CWA does not oppose the use of AI,” I wrote in the letter. “Our members use AI as a tool in their work and our union has secured more than three dozen collective bargaining agreements with employers that expressly cover the use of AI in the workplace.
“We’ve won protections to control the use of AI, protect jobs and establish labor/management committees to address AI-related issues in the workplace. We’ve developed productive ways to benefit from this technology, while avoiding some of its worst effects.”
I’m glad this proposal failed. States must have the right to regulate a technology that far too many bosses and publishers are rushing to adopt to cut costs, sideline workers and hurt their reputations, with no regard for the consequences of irresponsible AI use.
Speaking of…
Law360’s bosses are mandating reporters use a flawed bias detection “tool” on all stories. This mandate follows a company executive’s accusation that the newsroom had a liberal political bias. Teresa Harmon, a vice president at parent company LexisNexis, cited unspecified reader complaints as evidence of the editorial bias.
The story broke in NiemanLab yesterday.
Last month, reporters sent a petition to management calling for the tool to be made completely voluntary.
“As journalists, we should be trusted to select our own tools of the trade to do our information-gathering, reporting and editing — not pressured to use unproven technology against our will,” reads the petition, which 90% of the newsroom union signed.
In one example, the bias-o-meter flagged a factual sentence in coverage about a federal judge ruling that the Trump administration’s decision to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles was illegal. The sentence? “It’s the first time in 60 years that a president has mobilized a state’s National Guard without receiving a request to do so from the state’s governor.”
The bias-o-meter said the sentence was “framing the action as unprecedented in a way that might subtly critique the administration” and advised adding more context to “balance the tone.”
In reality, it is unprecedented for newsroom management to force journalists to use an untested technology riddled with its own biases.
Human journalists are trained over years and decades to seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently and be accountable and transparent. Stripping away human journalists isn’t about reducing bias, it’s about control. Executives want AI to churn out something that looks like journalism, without any of the responsibility, rigor or accountability that real reporting demands.
And who’s really in control? The bias-o-meter was built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, which was trained on millions of Reddit posts, Yelp reviews and who knows what else. On top of that, OpenAI scraped millions of news articles, including original work stolen from our members. Now, it’s being used to override journalists’ judgment in the publisher’s latest effort to jump on a new technology bandwagon. Pivot to video again, anyone?
Tell Law360 management: I want to read news produced by humans, not AI.
Last week, we filed an amicus brief in a case between Starbucks and the NLRB, where the company is pushing a subpoena seeking communications between organizing baristas and journalists. Starbucks is undermining the rights of private sector workers in the United States and undermining Americans’ rights for a free press under the First Amendment.
The National Labor Relations Right under Section 7 protects workers’ private communications with the press. We laid out the cases and set the record straight.
“Workers have statutory protection to speak to reporters about workplace disputes and unionization efforts,” we wrote. “Press communications are an essential Section 7 tool by which employees seek to improve working conditions by raising public awareness of their labor disputes.
“It is a violation of Section 7 for an employer to take coercive action that interferes with these rights, including issuing coercive subpoenas for such information.”
We first condemned Starbucks’ actions in 2022 when the company started seeking messages between reporters and baristas. We’re going to keep condemning companies that violate journalist and worker rights.
Workers at the Public Library of Science just reached a tentative agreement on their first contract nearly a year after more than 70 workers at the nonprofit science and technology publisher unionized with the Pacific Media Workers Guild in July 2023.
The new contract includes just cause protections, a grievance and arbitration process, layoff protections, restrictions on outsourcing union work and 3% wage increases for each year of the contract. They also scored upfront sick leave, four months of paid parental leave and more.
“We scored a more secure, equitable and supportive workplace for all of our colleagues, not just those in the unit and we hope we can raise the bar for other publishers too,” said Maddy Ghose, an associate editor at PLOS.
This win adds to a growing list of publishers that are now unionized with The NewsGuild-CWA, including Oxford University Press, Duke University Press and more.
Fact-checkers at Snopes announced their union campaign, pushing for voluntary recognition from their boss. Eighty percent of staffers signed cards supporting a union at the company founded 31 years ago.
Snopes was founded in 1994 and began with investigations into urban legends, hoaxes and folklore. Today Snopes reporters produce complex explainers on celebrity rumors, scientific discoveries and political news — all while combating the day-to-day onslaught of misinformation online.
“In forming a union, we join a historic tradition in the fight for labor rights worldwide and are poised to become one of the first dedicated fact-checking newsrooms to engage in collective action,” workers said in their mission statement.
Workers said in a video why they’re forming a union to join the Media Guild of the West, TNG-CWA Local 39213.
City Bureau workers also announced their union this week, launching with a fierce logo sporting sharp red nails on a raised fist. Workers at the nonprofit journalism lab are joining the Chicago News Guild to support a nationwide labor movement for a stronger media ecosystem.
In their mission statement, workers outlined several principles to guide their efforts, focusing on sustainability, responsibility, ethics, accountability, anti-racism and more.
Every single worker signed a union card and their mission statement supporting the formation of their union. Support them by signing their petition demanding voluntary recognition.
The Juntos Podemos Guild announced that they won voluntary recognition yesterday after announcing their union drive earlier this month to join the Pacific Media Workers Guild. They work at the SEIU Education and Support Fund and the Board of Directors smartly voted unanimously to recognize their union.
“Because of our collective voice and unwavering solidarity, we now have a seat at the table — and the power to bargain for the conditions, support, and dignity we all deserve,” the union said in a statement.
As they gear up to secure their first contract, they’re calling for liveable wages, clear job roles, true diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and accountability as well as a seat at the table alongside senior leadership.
We have two holidays this week in North America!
Happy belated Canada Day to our members in Canada and Happy Fourth of July to our American members! Have a great rest of your week and weekend!
In solidarity,
Jon Schleuss
President
The NewsGuild-CWA