Inside the NewsGuild’s fight to save journalism from hedge funds and pandemics

by Lia Russell

In 2015, 75 percent of staff at Gawker Media* voted to unionize with the Writers Guild of America-East, sparking a wave of digital and traditional print media organizing in order to address both day-to-day labor conditions such as pay and hiring, but also structural issues such handling the layoffs, buyouts, and general instability that has plagued the media sector in recent years.

(*One of the editors of Strikewave is a former Gawker staff writer.)

The Guardian U.S., ThinkProgress, and VICE Media soon followed. Many more media outlets have since done so, from legacy magazines to digital news sites.

The NewsGuild-Communications Writers of America (CWA) has emerged as arguably one of the most successful organizations to unionize newsrooms. Founded in the 1930s, the NewsGuild-CWA opted to leave the American Federation of Labor and join the Congress of Industrial Organizations in order to better reach non-editorial workers.

In addition to its long history, the NewsGuild-CWA has received renown for its more recent victories, such as the multi-year organizing effort at the Los Angeles Times, which followed a hard fought battle between management and rank-and-file employees. The Chandler family, which oversaw the LA Times’ publishing for most of the 20th century, was notorious for its pro-business, anti-union stance, effectively establishing one of the U.S.’s largest circulating newspapers as anti-labor.

In January 2018, after years of cuts and buyouts, and accusations of sexual misconduct that ultimately resulted in the resignation of publisher Ross Levohnson, the staff voted by an overwhelming majority (248-44) to unionize with the NewsGuild, a move that the New York Times categorized as a dramatic reversal of “more than a century of anti-union sentiment at one of the biggest newspapers in the country.”

Even more remarkable has been the NewsGuild-CWA’s success in states such as Texas, Florida, and Virginia that have had anti-union laws on the books for more than half a century.

In September 2018, the Tidewater Media Guild announced that it had formed as a coalition of staffers from The Virginian Pilot, Daily Press, Tidewater Review, and Virginia Gazette. Parent company Tronc Publishing soon voluntarily recognized them after 83 percent of staffers at the Daily Press and Virginian Pilot signed cards in support of the union. The previous May, Tronc, now known as Tribune Publishing, had also voluntarily recognized the union after 85 percent of staffers at The Chicago Tribune had indicated their support for forming a union.

Twenty-eight states, including the aforementioned three, have “right-to-work” laws that prohibit unions from charging agency fees to non-members whom they are obligated to represent under a collective bargaining agreement.

Most right-to-work states are in the South, Midwest, and southwestern U.S., reflecting its segregationist ethos. The right-to-work movement began as the brainchild of Texas businessman and known racist Vance Muse, who envisioned his anti-labor lobbying with the Christian American Association as the final frontier in saving the U.S. from the efforts of “Jewish Marxists” who were hellbent on enforcing integration and promoting “Communistic propaganda and influences.”

But while right-to-work laws certainly make organizing more difficult, it does not make it impossible. In recent years, unionization efforts at daily newspapers in such states have gained traction, especially in light of mass layoffs, furloughs, and owner restructuring, all of which have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In July 2018, reporters at the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, Fla., voted to unionize with the NewsGuild-CWA.

Andrew Pantazi, the co-chair of the Florida Times-Union Guild, told Strikewave that the impetus to organize his workplace came after GateHouse Media, as it was then known before merging with Gannet, purchased the paper in 2017.

Gannett, which merged with GateHouse Media in November 2019, owns over 100 newspapers across the U.S., including USA Today, the Florida Times-Union, the Detroit Free Press, and the Indianapolis Star.

“The company had the same reputation then as it does now of being ruthless,” Pantazi said in an interview.

“We naively thought at the time that maybe this would be better. The CEO visited our workplace, said very nice things, about how impressed he was with our work, and then three weeks later, he laid off 20 percent of the staff.”

He added that some of his colleagues who had been laid off were career reporters, including one who had spent 39 years at the Times-Union.

“The severance packages were abysmal. There was no notice, no opportunity to bargain. People were scrambling to figure out what to do next.”

We reached out to Gannett for comment on their employees’ organizing efforts. Gannett, however, did not respond to Strikewave’s request for comment.

Pantazi said that there had been some previous talk of unionizing but after the sudden layoffs the remaining newsroom members formed an organizing committee.

“We wanted stability and control over our own work.”

According to Pantazi, after five or six months, the committee went public with the union drive campaign, despite pushback from the company and obstacles such as scant previous organizing experience, a lack of previous knowledge about their rights as employees, and Florida’s own reputation as being hostile to workers.

(Voters approved a right-to-work amendment to the state Constitution in 1944 ahead of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, and the state had one of the country’s lowest rates of union membership in 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

The newsroom ended up voting 18-9 to join the union, and as of July 2020, the Guild is negotiating its first union contract, with a focus on diversity in hiring practices, stronger contract language about sexual harassment, and a plan to recruit more interns from historically Black universities and colleges.

“For a lot of us, being in a union means bringing democracy to the workplace,” Pantazi said. “Being owned by a company that’s owned by a private equity fund impacts how our work is done, what news our audience gets.”

Rebekah Sanders, a consumer protection reporter for the Arizona Republic and the chair of the Arizona Republic Guild, echoed the same sentiment.

She said that the urge to unionize her own workplace came in the summer of 2019 as Gannett, which also owns the Arizona Republic, was facing the threat of a hostile takeover by hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

“It was one of the most feared newspaper companies in the country because of their reputation for making drastic cuts.”

Gannett ended up merging with GateHouse instead later that fall, but the Arizona Republic Guild pressed on. It ended up winning its election in October in a landslide, and has been in bargaining over its first contract since then.

Pantazi and Sanders said that editorial integrity and newsroom diversity were particular issues of note for their respective teams.

Both unions are pushing for their leadership to honor the Rooney rule, which requires that at least a third of job candidate finalists come from diverse backgrounds, and for allowing journalists to withhold their bylines if they raise ethical issues with an assignment or story.

COVID has also impacted both newsrooms. In March, Poynter reported that Gannett implemented furloughs for all of its reporters who made $38,000 a year or more.

At the same time that they and their colleagues struggled with reduced hours, both Pantazi and Sanders said that Gannett executives received hefty payouts, raising their suspicions that the pandemic was being used as a cover to justify further cuts.

“In the last six months, they’ve paid out $15 million in executive golden parachutes at the same time they’re imposing furloughs and we’re dealing with enormous financial distress,” Pantazi said.

Sanders added Gannett had justified implementing harsh cuts to the newsroom by claiming that COVID presented an economic crisis.

“It’s strange because at the same time, they’re paying $5 million in an exit package for the CFO, and a $7.5 million exit package for the CEO.”

A request for comment to Gannett about the alleged size of their executives’ exit packages was pending.

Ultimately, both newsroom leaders told Strikewave that their unions’ goal was to ensure that both papers’ reporters would be able to continue serving their readers and their larger communities.

“Every part of our contract is about protecting our journalists from the short sighted decision-making of a company that cares more about profits for shareholders than strong local journalism,” Sanders said.

“The basic call from our Guild to the company is to invest in our newsroom; it does not help our business model to continue depressing wages and laying off people in the newsroom, because it means we produce less journalism and struggle even more to serve our readers.”

During the course of reporting this piece, a newsroom in yet another right-to-work state announced that it would seek recognition as a member of the NewsGuild-CWA, hoping to uphold much of the same values.

On July 20, staff at The Dallas Morning News and Al Día Dallas announced that they would seek recognition as the Dallas News Guild from its parent company, A.H. Belo. If they’re successful, they would be the first organized newsroom in Texas, the birthplace of “right to work.”

“The Dallas Morning News is one of the last remaining family-owned regional newspapers,” a statement announcing the union read.

“Our goals are one and the same: keep local journalism alive.”

Lia Russell is a journalist in the Bay Area.

AdminJuly 30, 2020