More than 75 unionized journalists at the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald and Bradenton Herald announced they were walking off the job Friday morning in protest of protracted first contract negotiations.
The walkout, which is scheduled to last 24 hours, comes after more than two years of bargaining at the One Herald Guild, which represents workers at the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, and over a year and a half of negotiations at the Bradenton Herald NewsGuild. Though the two units will ultimately have separate contracts, the bargaining team that is handling negotiations with parent company McClatchy has members from both units.
“We have decided we can’t keep on sacrificing our own personal lives for the company to make money and give us nothing in return,” One Herald Guild co-unit chair Mary Ellen Klas said. “Over one day, we are going to withhold our work and try and remind the company that we mean it when we say we want a fair contract.”
The two units say that McClatchy has been stalling negotiations. The unions first put out a proposal for a full contract in December, and the company has not yet offered a counter. On Feb. 25, the unions tried to set a one-month deadline for a complete contract, but McClatchy did not meet with them until March 25, when the unions presented a second proposed contract. The company told the unions earlier this week that it will offer a counter Friday.
McClatchy spokesperson Susan Firey wrote in an emailed statement that the company has been bargaining in good faith.
“The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald are in our communities today covering the news that matters to South Florida, as we have done for more than 100 years,” she wrote. “As always, we are negotiating in good faith and look forward to reaching an amicable agreement.”
One major issue of contention is wages. Though McClatchy set salary floors of $42,000 and $45,000 for its non-union employees in March 2021, there are workers at the three Florida papers who make less than that, Bradenton Herald NewsGuild unit chair Jessica De Leon said. She added that many people in her newsroom have not had a raise in three years.
The One Herald Guild, meanwhile, has struggled with issues of pay inequity. Some journalists at the Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald make $10,000 to $20,000 less than their peers at the Miami Herald despite having more experience, Klas said. The unions have proposed salary floors based on experience to try and remedy these inequities.
Other key proposals the unions are seeking include protections against outsourcing, layoff protections that respect seniority and higher company contributions to employee 401(k) plans.
In addition to higher wages, McClatchy has offered a number of other benefits to its non-union employees including paid parental leave and mileage reimbursement at the standard IRS rate. One new mother at the One Herald Guild was denied paid parental leave, said chief steward Aaron Leibowitz. In order to access these benefits, the unions need to add them to their contracts.
“A lot of our members are hurting. And because some of our salaries are so low, I have a lot of colleagues who are living paycheck to paycheck, who are actually working second jobs,” Leibowitz said. “Part of the sense of urgency that we feel to get a contract done is that our colleagues really need it.”
The One Herald Guild is the largest union within the McClatchy chain, which holds about 30 newspapers. It also became one of the first McClatchy papers to unionize as part of the current organizing movement in the media industry when it went public with its union drive in October 2019. (Other McClatchy papers like The Sacramento Bee have been unionized for decades).
Since 2019, McClatchy papers in Idaho, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, Kansas and North Carolina have launched their own union drives. Only the Packet/Gazette Guild, which represents journalists at the Hilton Head Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette, has ratified a first contract.
Several of the new unions have cited McClatchy’s new hedge fund owner as the reason for their organizing. Chatham Asset Management bought McClatchy out of family ownership in July 2020 after the company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier that year.
Union leaders at the Florida papers said the decision to walk out was not an easy one. As De Leon put it, “It pains us to step away from our work and the stories of our communities.” But in order to do their jobs and serve their readers, they said they need to first secure a contract with basic protections.
“I hope that McClatchy decides that the time is now to come to a head-to-head negotiation,” Klas said. “We’re ready. We’re ready to go. And we want them to end this delay.”
