Journalists, designers, engineers and business staff at The Texas Tribune announced Wednesday they are unionizing, just five months after the outlet held its first-ever layoffs.
Ninety percent of the roughly 50 eligible staff signed onto a mission statement supporting the union, which will be a part of the NewsGuild if voluntarily recognized. Employees at the Tribune said they are taking this step to preserve the positive work environment they already enjoy and to have a say in the outlet’s future. The Tribune, founded in 2009, has made its name as a nonprofit outlet dedicated to keeping Texans informed about public policy issues.
“We want to preserve the collaborative and open culture of our newsroom. We want to continue to be a workplace where all employees can build and sustain their professional careers. We want transparent, equitable and sustainable pay,” the union’s mission statement reads. “We want to cement many current business practices that make the Tribune a positive place to work, including benefits, flexible working policies and investment in professional development.”
Tribune CEO Sonal Shah told staff in an email Wednesday morning that if they want to unionize, the company will respect their right to representation.
“We will now start the process of working through the details of this request. When completed, we will respect the employees’ decision,” Shah wrote. “I do want everyone involved to understand there is a legal process, and it will require some time. We respect our colleagues’ right to collectively bargain.”
Asked whether the Tribune will voluntarily recognize the union, COO Natalie Choate pointed to Shah’s message and said the company respects the staff’s right to organize. If the Tribune declines to recognize the union, the staff can vote to unionize via a National Labor Relations Board election.
Workers at the Tribune had had conversations about organizing a union for years, but those discussions didn’t gain serious traction until last summer. Immigration reporter Uriel García said talks about a potential budget shortfall gave him a “sense of urgency” to talk to his colleagues about the benefits of unionizing.
García, who joined the Tribune in 2021 after working at The Arizona Republic, said he knew firsthand the benefits a union could provide. The Republic, which unionized in 2019, was largely spared from cost-cutting measures that hit other papers owned by parent company Gannett, thanks to “status quo” protections. Federal labor law mandates that companies negotiate with new unions before changing employees’ working conditions.
“I thought that was something that could also benefit Tribune employees,” García said.
Layoffs hit the Tribune newsroom in August, shocking staff and others in the media industry. Many had viewed the nonprofit, which had never experienced layoffs before, as a beacon of growth. The cuts affected 11 journalists and mobilized the rest of the staff to support a union campaign.
“People just wanted to finally have a more formal voice and a seat at the table in case our financial situation didn’t improve,” said María Méndez, a service and engagement reporter. “That was a really big moment that I think confused a lot of us and obviously concerned us.”
Less than two hours away, staff at the San Antonio Report, a digital nonprofit outlet that was founded in 2012 to provide local readers with “high-quality, thoughtful journalism,” took notice of the Tribune layoffs. They had been having on-and-off discussions about unionizing since 2022, and the Tribune news made them realize that they could be at risk of something similar in the future.
“We don’t have any protections in terms of if we get laid off or anything. We’ve grown so fast over the past 10 years that we don’t really have a lot of systems in place that a typical newsroom might, like a human resources person,” said Iris Dimmick, a senior reporter who covers social issues for the Report. “We thought (unionizing) was a good way to kind of help management establish some of those things.”
The San Antonio Report staff, who were also organizing with the NewsGuild, had originally planned to go public with their union campaign on the same day as the Tribune workers in a show of solidarity. But looming budget cuts forced them to move up their timeline.
“At the beginning of this year, we started hearing more rumblings from management about these budget cuts, and we just got kind of nervous after seeing what’s happening around the nation and in other newsrooms,” Report photojournalist Bria Woods said.
Management told the San Antonio Report staff in December that they had made cuts, none of which impacted full-time staff. But in January, they returned with news that further cuts would be needed to keep the 2024 budget balanced, Dimmick said.
The 15 editorial and business staffers at the Report decided to go public with their campaign early, asking management on Jan. 17 to voluntarily recognize their union by the end of the next day. After the company missed the deadline, the workers petitioned the NLRB for an election, which is scheduled for Jan. 30.
San Antonio Report publisher and CEO Angie Mock wrote in an email that the company is working to recognize the union.
“We informed the (San Antonio Report Union) on January 18 that due to our status as a nonprofit with a governing board, we needed to take advantage of the time afforded us by law to educate and prepare our organization for the next steps,” Mock wrote. “We signaled a likelihood that we will voluntarily recognize the union as quickly as possible, and we are diligently working toward that end.”
The two union campaigns come at a time of frenzied labor activity in Texas and across the country. Since 2020, journalists at the Austin American-Statesman, The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram have all unionized. The Austin NewsGuild is currently preparing for a strike due to delays in negotiations for its first contract.
Several of the Texas Tribune Guild’s organizers arrived at the outlet after spending time in other unionized newsrooms. Méndez, who came from the Austin American-Statesman, likened the Texas media scene to a “game of musical chairs.”
“What maybe makes Texas special is that there’s a lot of connections between newsrooms and journalists and a lot of camaraderie and solidarity,” Méndez said. “A lot of us, even outside of unionizing, tend to support each other, and even though we may work for competing organizations, we still try to support each other.”
Tribune higher education reporter Kate McGee is another organizer who had a positive experience with a unionized newsroom before arriving at the Tribune. She said that during her three years at the Tribune, she’s witnessed “massive” turnover at every level. Part of that churn was driven by the August layoffs, but many others have left for better opportunities. She hopes that unionizing will provide more stability.
“I want people to be able to have long-lasting careers here at the Tribune,” McGee said. “I think that the newsroom and our journalism just generally benefits when we have reporters and others who have an institutional knowledge of Texas.”
