We had a powerful union turnout two weeks ago at the Atlantic Union Rally! Guild members and labor allies gathered in D.C., right outside The Atlantic Festival 2024, the company’s highest profile event of the year. Rallygoers demanded that management recognize the value of the work produced by both the newsroom and business sides and agree to a fair contract.
Workers have been fighting for a contract for two years while the company drags its feet. Among the key issues, the our members are pushing for:
- Just Cause No Exceptions: A bedrock union protection that ensures due process around discipline.
- Work-life balance: Including remote work flexibility
- Layoff protections: As well as safeguarding jobs against the misuse of artificial intelligence. Earlier this year The Atlantic entered an opaque deal with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
Over 1,000 supporters have already signed the petition demanding that management provide these basic protections to Atlantic workers. Join them by signing the petition today!
Our members won a monumental decision last week, when the National Labor Relations Board ruled the nonprofit Color Of Change illegally laid off 54 workers. Color Of Change, one of the nation’s largest racial justice nonprofits, co-founded by Van Jones, was ordered to reinstate illegally laid-off workers and pay back wages and benefits — with interest!
The NLRB found that the organization violated labor laws by failing to notify and bargain with the union before laying off workers, a blatant breach of the status quo period before securing a first contract.
“Today’s NLRB ruling sends a powerful message: workers’ rights are not optional,” said Washington-Baltimore News Guild President Dan Gabor. “When employers violate labor laws, there will be consequences. Reinstatement and back pay are about more than just compensation; they’re a restoration of justice for the illegally laid-off workers and a reminder to all employers that the Washington-Baltimore News Guild will always defend our members and demand our rights be respected.”
The New York Times Guild supports the NYT Tech Guild’s overwhelming strike authorization. Though their contract prohibits them from striking, The New York Times Guild affirmed they would refuse to perform any work typically done by Tech Guild employees.
“We care deeply about the work of The New York Times and do not want to see any disruption to that work, particularly during a crucial election season. But management has failed to make many substantive counterproposals and is refusing to schedule sufficient bargaining time to reach a reasonable deal.” the resolution of support said.
“The best way to avoid a disruption to our work is for management to offer a fair contract as quickly as possible.”
The strike authorization came shortly before a recent tone-deaf proposal by management offering:
- A meager 1% annual raise,
- A pitiful 2% raise for promotions,
- A pay floor $16,000 lower than our lowest paid member’s current salary
- No immediate pay increase upon contract ratification.
Meanwhile, New York Times executives are pocketing millions, with President and CEO Meredith Levien alone collecting over $10 million in compensation last year. NY Times executives get plenty while offering the workers pennies:
Journalists at the Southern California News Group (SCNG), owned by Alden Global Capital, overwhelmingly voted (94%) to authorize an open-ended strike. This is the first time such a vote has occurred among journalists at an Alden-owned newsroom.
- Unfair labor practices and continued stall tactics by management.
- Many SCNG reporters have gone more than a decade without a raise.
- A study revealed that 80% of SCNG Guild members are classified as low-income earners under HUD guidelines, with over 10% considered very low-income.
“This vote should serve as a wakeup call for management who for more than two and a half years of bargaining has failed to offer acceptable wages and benefits,” said Sean Emery, an SCNG reporter and Guild Unit Chair.
“The patience of our members is wearing thin. They are tired of struggling to survive on low wages that have remained stagnant for years. They are tired of waiting more than a decade for raises that never come. We are dedicated to covering our communities. But we will not stand by and watch the leaders of our company drag their feet when it comes to offering a fair contract.”
Last week I interviewed Emma Cueto from Law360 to talk about their open-ended strike, what led to it, how they made it so successful and what they won negotiating their second collective bargaining agreement.
There are some really awesome nuggets in the 3,300 word Q&A.
For instance, I asked Emma how they got more than 93% of their 260 members to authorize the strike.
A lot of it was the groundwork during the campaign. As a bargaining committee, we wanted to be transparent with people. We encourage people to come to bargaining. Even skeptical people were won over by tuning in on zoom and hearing how the company talked to us. We’re all coworkers and know we were all reasonable. People didn’t like the way management’s attorneys talked to us.
Building on that we had an amazingly robust Contract Action Team, or CAT. More than 40 people I think who had done their own groundwork having conversations with members and building relationships to establish trust and solidarity.
When it came down to it we had a unit meeting and talked to people about what a strike would mean and I think it was one of the things that did a lot with people. We showed people that we had put a lot of thought into this and had answers to their questions. Things like how healthcare worked on strike. Or unemployment. Questions from members on how strike pay worked and what if they were planning to be on vacation or were on parental leave.
Everyone had a lot of questions.
Wait, a union of journalists has a lot of questions?!
The answer to the main question: did they win the strike? Hell yeah they did. The win by Law360 workers is one for all of us to celebrate and learn from. It takes so much of what we’ve learned from the late Jane McAlevey, who even featured Law360 members in her final book Rules To Win By. We lost Jane this past summer. We continue her legacy by championing her fundamentals: open bargaining, escalating actions and super majority (and tracked!) support for collective actions.Be sure to read the interview with Emma.
Our new members at the Anchorage News Guild will vote in an NLRB election on October 8th after management refused to voluntarily recognize their union, despite 80% of ADN newsroom staff supporting their decision to join the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild.
Workers at Oxford University Press need your help in the wake of unjust layoffs by management. Three weeks after ratifying their first Collective Bargaining Agreement, Oxford University Press has notified 13 union employees that they are being laid off.
These layoffs are a direct violation of the new contract–both a provision that protects historic union work from being relocated out of the unit and the layoffs article.
We need YOUR support to help pressure the Press to reverse this decision.
Journalists of Hearst Connecticut Media are pushing full-steam ahead for an election and sharing why they want a union on social media this week.
Newsletter editor, Martha Shanahan says she likes her job and wants that to be true of all her coworkers. That’s why she supports unionizing.
“We all deserve to get paid fairly and feel secure and respected in our jobs,” she said.
Members also got together this week for a picnic, fostering camaraderie and good union vibes!
We won a significant ruling from the NLRB in Pittsburgh in the last two weeks. Haven’t we already won a bunch of favorable rulings, you might be asking.
Why yes! But this is yet another. The full board affirmed a decision by an administrative law judge in early 2023 who said the company violated federal law by bargaining in bad faith and illegally imposing terms without negotiation. That’s a strong win that continues to signal the Blocks are wasting millions in a fight they will lose. We won’t let this go. Next month we’ll be looking at two years on strike and we will continue our fight to hold power to account. Especially when it’s one of our companies. We’re also still waiting for an injunction in our case, but all of these cases are moving forward.
Yesterday we had our third annual Strike School, with members from Fort Worth to Pittsburgh to New York. Members shared stories about how they built successful strikes. We’re at 34 strikes so far this year. And we affirmed Saturday that we will continue to stand with our strikers. I donated to our strikers again on Saturday and you should too. We shall see this through to the end.
It was just a few weeks ago that California Governor Gavin Newsom torpedoed legislation that would have corrected the imbalance between Big Tech and media access. The governor pushed a backroom deal supported by Google and OpenAI to the strong objections of every group that represents journalists (us obviously included).
So, what actually happened? There are a lot of unanswered questions laid out in a recent story in the Los Angeles Times.
Early this summer, California was positioned to lead on tech regulation as lawmakers considered bills to force big digital platforms to pay local news. But, Google lobbied hard against the bills which would compensate news outlets for articles that show up in search results. That compensation was going to be directly tied to increasing and securing journalism jobs in the state.
But then Gov. Gavin Newsom stepped in and pushed a backroom deal.
“There’s nothing in this deal that’s a deal,” said Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West and a former L.A. Times reporter, noting Google set the terms. “It’s all built on a handshake — a handshake with a monopoly.”
It’s essential we engage at all levels on any legislation impacting our profession. We cannot be objective about our own demise. We’ll continue to fight for legislation that secures our jobs as a pillar of democracy.
Reminder: The Seattle News Guild is still accepting applications for an Executive Officer role for their local. Fill out a job application and send an email to guild37082@gmail.com with a resume, a letter of interest in the executive officer position and a list of references by October 1, 2024.
Baltimore Sun journalists will rally at 11 a.m. ET this Saturday. I’ll join our members alongside former NewsGuild President Linda Foley, who’s now a delegate in the Maryland legislature. Join us if you’re in town!
In solidarity,
Jon