© Reuters. The newspaper’s banner emblem is seen in the course of the grand opening of the Washington Publish newsroom in Washington January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File Picture
By Steve Gorman and Helen Coster
(Reuters) -Unionized journalists at The Washington Publish mentioned they’d stage a 24-hour strike on Thursday to protest employees cuts and what they name administration’s failure to cut price in good religion in contract talks which have stretched on for 18 months.
The deliberate one-day walkout would mark the primary common work stoppage on the Publish for the reason that bitter, 20-week pressmen’s strike of 1975-76, when Katharine Graham was writer, based on union officers.
The most recent labor conflict comes just a little greater than a month after William Lewis, former writer of The Wall Road Journal, was named chief govt and writer of the Publish because the venerable Washington every day newspaper was projecting a year-end lack of $100 million. Lewis is because of take cost on Jan. 2, 2024.
The Publish is considered one of many information retailers struggling to plan a sustainable enterprise mannequin within the many years for the reason that web upended the economics of journalism and digital promoting charges plummeted.
Executives on the Publish, which is owned by billionaire Amazon.com (NASDAQ:) founder Jeff Bezos, mentioned on the time of the Lewis announcement that they had been providing voluntary buyouts throughout the corporate in a bid to scale back worker headcount by about 10% and shrink the dimensions of the newsroom to about 940 journalists.
The Washington-Baltimore Information Guild, which represents greater than 1,000 editorial, promoting and different non-news employees on the Publish, mentioned mismanagement by the earlier writer led to just about 40 layoffs final yr – half from the newsroom – and the corporate was now searching for to chop one other 240 jobs by means of buyouts.
Representatives for the newspaper’s administration didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for touch upon the labor dispute.
In accordance with the union, administration has threatened to impose extra layoffs if too few staffers settle for voluntary severance packages.
“That means fewer Post employees making the critical journalism that keeps our communities informed and holds our public officials accountable,” the Guild mentioned in a web based assertion.
Furthermore, after 18 months of contract negotiations, “the company is refusing to pay us what we’re worth or bargain in good faith,” the union mentioned on the social media platform X, previously generally known as Twitter. “So on Dec. 7, we’re walking off the job for 24 hours.”
A Guild-produced on-line video options quite a few Publish journalists, together with chief Ukraine correspondent Siobhan O’Grady, pledging to strike and urging readers to “respect our picket line by avoiding Washington Post journalism” in the course of the walkout.
They assert the corporate’s wage proposals would fail to maintain tempo with inflation or with the pay of rivals.
The minute-long video ends with the chorus, “because we’re worth more, worth more than our bosses are offering.”
Of the 1,000-plus Publish staff coated beneath the Information Guild’s contract, greater than 700 are dues-paying members of the union, whereas practically 750 staffers have pledged to watch the walkout, Sarah Kaplan, chief guild steward on the newspaper, mentioned on Tuesday.
“The paper will suffer for a day, and that’s not something we take lightly,” she mentioned, including that the strike is meant to ship the message that “cutting and disinvesting in employees is not a path to success.”
