Legislation would make it easier for journalists to unionize their newsrooms

Legislation filed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate would make it easier for journalists to form a union, according to a panel of labor experts who discussed the bill at a National Press Club Headliners event on Tuesday, Oct. 15.

The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) bill would both make it easier for newsrooms to initially establish a union and collectively bargain their first contract, said Brian Petruska, general counsel for the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) Mid-Atlantic Regional Organizing Coalition.

The bill would provide a process for getting to the first contract, an important change as less than half of successful union organizing elections lead to first contracts, which Petruska said is the point of collective bargaining. “If you're not delivering that, you're not meeting the fundamental premise,” he said.

More journalists are electing to organize their workplaces as private equity and hedge-fund ownership proliferate through the industry. More than 100 newsrooms in the US and Canada, including the New York Times tech group of software developers and project managers, covering 5,136 people, have voted to organize since 2020, Jon Schleuss, the international president of The NewsGuild-Communication Workers of America (TNG-CWA), told the Wire.

Schleuss, a former reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Los Angeles Times, said journalists organizing could benefit reporters at all experience levels. Mid-career reporters and older would have better job security as they would not be the first to lose jobs in layoffs due to their higher salaries. Hedge funds and private-equity ownership, he said, typically initially target journalists with higher salaries for layoffs.

All journalists, especially younger ones, would benefit from being able to negotiate better healthcare benefits, Schleuss said. Younger journalists in non-unionized newsrooms often have to choose the more expensive high-deductible healthcare plans because they can't afford the monthly premiums of better options, he said.

Schleuss in 2018 was part of the group of workers who organized the first newsroom union at the Los Angeles Times, a news outlet famously known for being anti-union. He said Times journalists were inspired to unionize when the newspaper stripped them of their accrued vacation time and moved them to “unlimited” flexible time off.

Times reporters, he said, often saved their accrued vacation for important events, like emergencies or medical procedures. Those hours were simply taken away because Times journalists didn't have a union. “It became a very quick conversation of 'Gee, maybe we should [organize],'” Schleuss said.

Many newsrooms based in Washington have recently earned union contracts or are working toward them. Politico and E&E News ratified their contract earlier this year with parent Axel Springer SE. Their newsroom reached a tentative three-year agreement in January for its first-ever collective bargaining agreement after 20 months of negotiations, according to TNG-CWA.

CQ Roll Call, part of FiscalNote, voted in February to form a union with 90% of eligible members voting in support, TNG-CWA said. The Hill and Washingtonian have also voted to form unions.

The Washington Post had a one-day strike in December.

One-day strikes, often test runs for longer work stoppages, are typically timed around an event for maximum leverage, Schleuss told the Wire after the event. Strikes by the Southern California News Group (SCNG) and the NYT software developers and tech workers could take place around the upcoming election, he said.

Unfortunately for journalists seeking union contracts from hostile ownership, the federal agency tasked with safeguarding employees’ rights to organize is under fire from business interests and is perennially underfunded. There are multiple basic challenges to the agency: Having to do with the removability of the board members, removability of administrative law judges and the right to a jury trial, said Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

After receiving the same appropriations since 2014, Congress funded the NLRB at $299 million for 2023, an increase of $25 million, the NLRB said in a December 2022 press release. In fiscal year 2022, total case intake at NLRB field offices increased 23%, the largest single year increase since fiscal year 1976 and the largest percentage increase since fiscal year 1959.

At the same time, staffing had fallen at the NLRB in December 2022. Overall agency staffing levels had dropped 39% since fiscal year 2002 and staffing in field offices had shrunk by 50%. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” Abruzzo said. “There are inherent delays because of the lack of resources.”