Washington Post (WP) journalists plan 24-hour strike due to prolonged contract negotiations – Reuters
© Reuters. The newspaper’s banner logo can be seen at the Washington Post newsroom opening in Washington on January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/file photo
Steve Gorman and Helen Coster
(Reuters) – Union journalists at The Washington Post said they would stage a 24-hour strike on Thursday to protest staff cuts and management’s failure to negotiate in good faith in contract talks that have lasted 18 months.
According to union officials, the planned one-day strike would be the Post’s first full-scale work stoppage since a grueling 20-week reporters’ strike in 1975-76 when Katharine Graham was publisher.
The labor-management clash comes just over a month after William Lewis, the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, was named CEO and publisher as Washington’s venerable daily newspaper forecast a year-end deficit of $100 million. Lewis is scheduled to take charge on January 2, 2024.
The Post is one of many media outlets struggling to devise a sustainable business model in the decades since the Internet disrupted the economics of journalism and sent digital advertising rates plummeting.
Executives at The Post, owned by billionaire Amazon.com (NASDAQ:) founder Jeff Bezos, said at the time of Lewis’ announcement that they were reducing their workforce by about 10% and were offering a company-wide voluntary buyout to reduce headcount. Reduce newsroom size to approximately 940 journalists.
The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents more than 1,000 editorial, advertising and other non-news employees, said about 40 people — half the newsroom — were laid off last year due to mismanagement by the previous publisher and the company They said they are currently laying off employees. The acquisition will result in the elimination of an additional 240 jobs.
Representatives of the newspaper’s management did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the labor dispute.
According to the union, management threatened more layoffs if too few employees took voluntary severance.
“This means there are fewer Post employees producing critical journalism that informs our communities and holds public officials accountable,” the guild said in an online statement.
Moreover, after 18 months of contract negotiations, the union said on the social media platform “So on December 7th we will be closed from work for 24 hours.”
An online video produced by the guild shows numerous Post reporters, including Ukraine correspondent Siobhan O’Grady, pledging to strike and urging readers to “respect the picket lines by avoiding Washington Post journalism” during the strike. It contains a picture.
They claim the company’s wage offer will not keep pace with inflation or the wages of its competitors.
The minute-long video ends with the refrain, “Because we deserve more than what our bosses give us.”
Of the more than 1,000 Post employees under contract with the News Guild, more than 700 are dues-paying union members, and nearly 750 employees have pledged to observe the strike, News Guild senior official Sarah Kaplan said Tuesday. .
“This is going to be a difficult day for the newspaper and we don’t take that lightly,” she said, adding that the strike was intended to send the message that “cutting staff and disinvesting is not the path to success.”
