Who gets to be a journalist?

About three weeks ago, we announced our intent to form the SCNG Guild. Now, the Southern California News Group is fighting our unionization by taking us to a hearing today before the National Labor Relations Board, where management’s attorney will try to argue that dozens of journalists in our newsroom — copy editors, page designers, graphic artists, and social media and digital producers — should not be allowed to unionize with their colleagues.

“The company’s position is that reporters, photographers and those who create content have a distinct community of interest that is different from employees who work in the California design center where the news pages for SCNG and other newspapers are built for printing,” SCNG publisher Ron Hasse wrote in a March 5 letter to all SCNG editorial employees. “We believe that the two groups are separate and distinct and have separate communities of interest for a variety of reasons.”

We reject the company’s attempt to stall the unionization process and create a dividing line in our newsroom. 

In the hearing, SCNG journalists will testify to lay out the facts of how our newsroom operates, how interchangeable and interconnected our jobs are, and how all of us have a shared community of interest. 

What we know:

• All of us editorial staffers — copy editors, page designers, social media and digital producers, reporters, photographers, and clerks — are journalists.

• We all work together toward the common goal of sharing our journalism for our readers hungry for information about their communities.

• We all deserve a united voice and a seat at the bargaining table. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. The hearing delays us, but one way or another, the SCNG Guild will get its vote. SCNG management could decide, even now, to reach an election agreement with us that allows every journalist — designers, copy editors and producers included — to participate. We invite the company to recognize our shared goals as journalists and our collective desire as the SCNG Guild to build a better way forward.