Journalists at 11 Southern California daily newspapers win union election
Journalists at 11 daily newspapers in Southern California have voted overwhelmingly to form a union, the new SCNG Guild announced Friday. The vote was 64-19.
“This is a momentous day for the workers of the Southern California News Group,” said Josh Cain, a reporter at the Los Angeles Daily News and a member of the Guild’s Organizing Committee.
“Some of these newspapers are unionizing for the first time. This means their staff, who have endured years of low pay as their newsrooms shrank around them, will now have a seat at the bargaining table.”
This is the first time journalists at all Southern California newspapers under the umbrella of Alden Global Capital have jointly voted to form a union. The SCNG Guild will collectively bargain for better salaries, benefits and working conditions. While inflation has gone up cumulatively by more than 20% nationwide since 2010, SCNG journalists’ pay has remained stagnant.
The SCNG Guild represents about 140 non-management editorial employees.
The journalists’ union will be a unit of the Media Guild of the West, a local of The NewsGuild-CWA. MGW represents hundreds of journalists at the Los Angeles Times, the Arizona Republic and other news outlets.
SCNG journalists originally announced their plan to unionize in February. Management refused to voluntarily recognize the union and delayed the vote by forcing the Guild to go to a hearing in March before the National Labor Relations Board.
There, the company tried to argue that the journalists should be split into separate unions: reporters, clerks and photographers in one unit and copy editors, page designers, digital producers, graphic artists and social media producers in the other.
In May, the NLRB rejected the company’s argument, affirming the journalists’ right to organize as one newsroom and one union and enabling the election by mail ballot to move forward.
"We look forward to working with management to negotiate a fair contract that increases wages, addresses declining benefits and improves our working conditions,” said Elizabeth Chou, reporter and SCNG Guild organizing committee member. “Frankly, it's about time.”
The Southern California News Group includes the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, (Long Beach) Press-Telegram, (Torrance) Daily Breeze, San Bernardino Sun, Pasadena Star-News, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Whittier Daily News and the Redlands Daily Facts. The papers attract an online audience of 17.6 million monthly unique visitors, according to the company, and some 451,000 Sunday print subscribers.
The company is owned by Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group. The New York-based hedge fund is known for slashing newsroom budgets to the bone. Last month, Alden Global finalized a $633 million deal to buy Tribune Publishing newspapers, even as it refuses to invest in its own newsrooms.
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The Media Guild of the West, TNG-CWA Local 39213, represents more than 800 workers in California, Arizona and Texas, including at The Los Angeles Times and The Arizona Republic. The NewsGuild-CWA represents more than 25,000 journalists and other news industry employees in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.