Journal Sentinel Staff Didn’t Join Gannett Walkout
JS guild's no-strike clause prevents its journalists from joining national walkout.
Union journalists working for Gannett walked off the job Monday for one day as part of a national protest to decry cuts that have led to job losses across the country, including at Gannett newspapers in Wisconsin.
Workers at about two dozen Gannett papers joined Monday’s walkout, organized by the News Guild to coincide with the company’s annual shareholder meeting, according to National Public Radio.
Gannett’s two Wisconsin newspapers where employees are represented by the News Guild, the Sheboygan Press and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, did not take part. The Milwaukee News Guild’s Journal Sentinel contract includes a no-strike clause; the 2015-2016 agreement remains in effect under an evergreen provision until it’s replaced.
“We continue to call for Gannett to invest in local newsrooms, pay us fair wages, and negotiate in good faith so all guild newspapers can get the contracts they deserve,” the Milwaukee News Guild tweeted Monday in a Twitter thread reporting on the walkout elsewhere in the U.S.
Gannett has cut its workforce by 54% in the last four years, national News Guild president Jon Schleuss told NPR. The cuts followed the 2019 merger with GateHouse Media four years ago that saddled the company with $1.8 billion in debt.
On Twitter Schleuss called for the ouster of Gannett CEO Mike Reed. The Milwaukee News Guild tweeted that Reed “has gutted local newsrooms to line his own pocket” and ended the shareholder meeting without answering questions Schleuss had submitted challenging Reed’s $3.4 million 2022 salary and $7.7 million 2021 salary.
At the time of the GateHouse merger, employees inside Gannett and newspaper analysts outside the company warned that the deal would likely lead to continued cost-cutting.
The News Guild represents reporters at about 50 Gannett newsrooms across the country, including 18 that organized in the last four years, Schleuss tweeted Monday.
“They’re doing it because they want to save their publications for their communities. They want a living wage. They want enough staff to cover their communities and they want diverse newsrooms that look like the communities they cover,” Schleuss wrote.
No-strike clause keeps Milwaukee Journal Sentinel workers from joining Gannett national walkout was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.
Typical private equity playbook. Buy a company, saddle them with debt to cover the purchase cost (12% interest in this case), sell any hard assets for cash, cut costs (staff) to the bone, when the milk is gone, sell the remainder. These guys add nothing to the economy, just line their own pockets.
And the bell tolls as a formerly great paper slips under the waves (of greedy investors and their minions). Sad.
Anyone reach out to Joel “The Hypocrite” McNally for comment? You know, the guy who agitated for the newsroom to unionize when he was a worker-bee at the old Journal but quashed similar efforts at the Shepherd Express while he was editor there.