Posts tagged Journalists
Unionized POLITICO Journalists ‘Win Landmark Arbitration’ On AI Protections
December 9, 2025 // Unionized Journalists employed at POLITICO and E&E News (The PEN Guild) have secured a major victory in their arbitration case against POLITICO management over the company’s unilateral introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that bypassed negotiated safeguards and undermined core journalistic standards. In a detailed decision, the arbitrator found POLITICO violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement when it launched two AI-driven products - a “Live Summaries” feature used during the 2024 Democratic National Convention and Vice Presidential Debate, and the Capitol AI Report-Builder tool for POLITICO Pro subscribers - without providing required notice, bargaining, or human oversight, as required by the contract.
Los Angeles Times Journalists Ratify New Labor Contract, Averting Strike
December 4, 2025 // The deal offers members thousands of dollars in raises. Employees at the Times will receive $3,000 in wage increases in the first year of the contract, $2,750 in the second year and $2,500 in the third year. Those who work at Times Community News will receive $5,000 raises in the first year of the deal and $4,000 in the second and third years. The contract also enshrines Juneteenth as a holiday, codifies protections around employees using their chosen names and pronouns and asserts that the paper must respond when members face online harassment. The deal requires that management disclose any mandatory drug testing in job postings and creates union-covered “per diem” positions (a move intended to limit the use of non-union freelancers and temporary workers).
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette journalists planning to return to work, ending 3-year strike
November 25, 2025 // Part of those nerves comes from what happens on Monday. After a rally outside the paper's office to celebrate Monday morning they will head inside, unsure of exactly what to expect. "We've heard nothing from the Post-Gazette," Goldstein said.
Los Angeles Times Journalists Authorize a Strike
October 14, 2025 // Eighty-five percent of members who belong to the newsroom’s union and participated in the vote opted to allow the labor group to call a strike. The union, a Local of the Media Guild of the West, represents more than 200 reporters, editors, photographers, designers and others at L.A.’s hometown paper. Around 98 percent of those participated in the vote.
Hundreds of VOA employees set to be axed amid legal fight with Trump
May 19, 2025 // The VOA workforce includes roughly 1,350 employees. Full-time employees were not affected by the terminations, but there’s an expectation that those positions will be considered later, according to several people familiar with the situation who all spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Lake said 584 total employees were terminated across USAGM, which also includes the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. She didn’t provide a breakdown but said the majority were from VOA.
What was the impact of AB5 on California’s marginalized communities?
March 31, 2025 // Esther Hermida, a representative of the American Alliance of Professional Translators and Interpreters (AAPTI) testified about AB5’s impact on thousands of citizens in her industry comprised of 75 percent women. One professional translator, Ildiko Santana, reported she started her small business in 2000 as an immigrant and woman of color. She lost all 50 clients and all her income in 2020 when AB5 went into effect.
Bergen Record reporters vote to walk out
March 14, 2025 // Print circulation at The Record is down by over 90% since Gannett purchased the newspaper from the Borg family in 2016 and now prints less than 14,000 newspapers daily.
LNP, WITF journalists to vote on unionizing
February 3, 2025 // Not everyone in the newsrooms is in favor of affiliating with a union. Michael Long, 51, an LNP | LancasterOnline deputy editor, said he will be voting no. “Across the board, unions decrease profitability,” Long said in an email to LNP | LancasterOnline colleagues. “And if you take away money from an organization that is already losing money, it will only hasten more layoffs.” When grievances occur, Long said in a followup interview, “there’s nothing stopping us from making concerted, good-faith efforts to address them ourselves with management.”
The strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is now the longest in the nation. And it’s not over.
December 9, 2024 // Zack Tanner, the Newspaper Guild’s president, stood away from the crowd, wearing a Penguins jersey and smoking a cigar. His dog, a 103 lb. Akita named Bella, had been a little too excited by another, smaller dog in the crowd. “This has been elongated to this point solely because of the people inside,” he said. “In a labor battle, there’s strikers and there’s scabs. There’s two sides to a picket line.” As the strike has gone on, tensions between both sides have grown, and it’s unclear how or when the strike will end. On Nov. 13, the first negotiations between the Post-Gazette’s lawyers and the union in over a year ended after Tanner threw a chair at the wall of a conference room in the Omni William Penn Hotel.
Commentary: The Media Are Doing Free PR for Big Labor
September 13, 2024 // According to a new report from the union watchdog Freedom Foundation (where I work), Big Labor’s return to the spotlight coincides with unionization efforts that have taken newsrooms by storm, securing one in six American journalists as dues-paying members. With journalists “more knowledgeable and sympathetic to labor issues” than ever before, recent union reporting insists that Big Labor is making a comeback; “that unions are good not only for individual workers but also for America itself”; and that legislation meant to ensure union accountability is a threat to democracy.