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Los Angeles Times Newsroom, Challenging Tronc, GoesPublic With Union
Push By SYDNEY EMBER OCT. 4, 2017
Newsroom employees at The Los Angeles Times are trying to form aunion, setting up a potential clash with the newspaper’s parentcompany, Tronc. After months of organizing, the committee behindthe push for a union drafted a one-page letter laying out itsreasoning and left printouts on employees’ desks Tuesday night. Theunsigned letter calls for improved working conditions, higher pay,more generous benefits and protections for staff members against“unilateral change by Tronc.” The letter also says “a majority ofthe newsroom” had signed union cards supporting representation bythe NewsGuild, which represents 25,000 reporters, editors,photojournalists and other media workers at news organizationsacross the United States. Several people involved in the organizingpush, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because theyfeared losing their jobs if they were to speak publicly
about the effort, put the number of those who had signed theunion cards at roughly 200. “Yearly raises have become a thing ofthe past,” the letter says. “Talented journalists who want to buildcareers here have left for better pay and opportunities at othernews outlets.” In August, Tronc abruptly ousted top newsroomleaders at The Times, including Davan Maharaj, who had been thepublisher and editor since March 2016. Other leaders at the paper,including Marc Duvoisin, a managing editor; Megan Garvey, thedeputy managing editor for digital; and Matt Doig, the assistantmanaging editor for investigations, were also fired. The attempt toform a union, which began late last year, is very likely toaggravate relations between Times employees and Tronc management.Tronc, which has its headquarters in Chicago and was previouslyknown as Tribune Publishing, has installed newsroom leaders whohave not endeared themselves to those in the Los Angeles newsroom.Cost-cutting measures, including sweeping layoffs, have agitatedthe staff. Last year, Tronc instituted an abrupt change to thevacation policy that effectively eliminated accrued vacation days,according to several employees interviewed. That change, theseemployees said, had helped motivate the union drive. It is notunusual for management to bristle at efforts to organize employees,and Tronc is no exception. After the company learned of the talk inthe newsroom, Times managers distributed fliers that warned of thesupposed pitfalls of unionization. “There is no obligation on thepart of a company to continue existing benefits and it is notagainst the law for the company to offer reduced wages and benefitsin bargaining,” one flier said, in bold, capital letters. Theflier, which was obtained by The New York Times, featured aclip-art drawing of a person standing on two dice. Tronc also helda meeting with Times managers in a glass-walled conference room inthe newsroom, during which company representatives unveiled aPowerPoint presentation with bullet points for countering theunionization effort, according to several employees. In group andone-on-one meetings with journalists, Times editors, at Tronc’sinstruction, have made it clear that anyone who joined a unionmight have to renegotiate his or her benefits, the employees said.Tronc did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In theletter distributed to the newsroom, the organizing committee listeda number of conditions it wanted to negotiate, including annualstaffwide pay raises, guaranteed minimum salaries, and equal payfor men and women and minorities. Workers at many of the country’sbiggest news outlets, including The New York Times, The WashingtonPost and The Wall Street Journal, are represented by unions.Employees at several digital news outlets, including HuffPost andVice Media, are also unionized. The first organizing meeting amongLos Angeles Times newsroom employees occurred last spring. InAugust, after the shake-up involving top editors and executives,about 100 Times journalists gathered in a conference room at aDoubletree Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where some workers madethe case for a union.
