Editorial staff at the Wilmington News Journal want to unionize
"We are unionizing in an effort to seek structural change in an industry where corporate decision makers continue to slash newsrooms across the country," a statement from the Wilmington News Journal's new Delaware News Guild read.
More than two-thirds of the 27 editorial staffers at the Gannett-owned Delaware Online/Wilmington News Journal have signed union cards in hopes of joining the News Guild, the newly formed Delaware News Guild said.
“The merger of Gannett and Gatehouse Media has made our industry even more uncertain,” the group said in a statement. “Both companies have histories of mismanaging resources to the detriment of journalism. We are unionizing in an effort to seek structural change in an industry where corporate decision makers continue to slash newsrooms across the country.”
The group has asked Gannett to voluntarily recognize the union. If it doesn’t, the workers will vote in a formal election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. The workers need a simple majority (50% of votes + 1) to form a union.
The News Journal is the latest in a series of media companies, from new media to public media to legacy print organizations, that have sought to form unions in the last few years as the industry faces precarious finances and staggering buyouts and layoffs. In Philadelphia, editorial staffers at WHYY unionized with SAG-AFTRA last fall.
Staffers at these media companies have also been part of a broader trend of young people in a range of industries turning to collective action to fight for stronger protections on the job during a time when union membership has fallen to a historic low.
Monday morning, a group of staffers delivered to executive editor Mike Feeley the letter they sent to Gannett announcing their intent to unionize, said Natalia Alamdari, an education reporter at the News Journal who said that the organizing campaign began last summer.
The workers stressed that their union campaign had nothing to do with local management, which they hold in high esteem. Rather, it’s about the uncertainty that the Gannett/GateHouse Media merger brings to the newsroom.
“We’re always on edge in this industry,” Alamdari said, but the merger heightened their anxiety.
By then, the organizing campaign was already underway but the merger pushed the group to follow through, she said.
The Delaware News Guild, which will be part of the same local that represents The Inquirer, declined to comment on specific issues that the union would fight for, saying only that it hoped the union would help preserve its current working conditions, as well as improve them.
Gannett and GateHouse did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the Delaware News Guild, in a tweet, said that Gannett said it would not voluntarily recognize the union. The Guild has filed for an NLRB election, which will be held in 30 days.
Since October, three Gannett-owned newspapers have unionized, and four others based in Florida have announced their intent to unionize. Last fall, a human resources staffer at Gannett confiscated the cell phone of an Arizona Republic reporter involved in the newspaper’s union campaign. Workers in that newsroom, who said they hoped a union would protect them as Gannett moved to merge with GateHouse Media, voted to unionize in October.
Gannett and GateHouse Media merged late last year in a $1.4 billion deal. The combined entity owns more than 260 regional newspapers that together employ about 24,000 people.