The owners of the Anchorage Daily News were invited by unionizing reporters to recognize the Anchorage News Guild as the legal labor negotiating entity representing the newsroom at the daily paper, which now only publishes in newsprint twice a week.
ADN owner Ryan Binkley said “no.”
That means the election at the new union will go forward for the 16 or so employees of the newsroom who signed union authorization cards for the newly forming Anchorage News Guild. Those who wish to support the journalists in organizing a union can sign the petition here.
“As the representation petition Anchorage News Guild filed with the National Labor Relations Board requests, we believe the employees should have an opportunity to decide whether they wish to be represented by the Anchorage News Guild in a free and fair secret ballot election conducted by the NLRB,” Binkley wrote in a letter to staff on Thursday, according to the letter that the union organizers publicized.
The reporters want higher pay and believe that unionizing will bring that to them.
“The decision by ADN management not to grant voluntary recognition of the Anchorage News Guild delays the beginning of contract negotiations that newsroom employees have said are critical to guarantee equitable, sustainable wages moving forward,” the guild said in a statement. “Their decision fails to honor the voices of the hard-working staff of the ADN newsroom.”
The guild members believe they will succeed and will organize under a national union, NewsGuild-CWA, which represents 25,000 media professionals at over 40 publications.
The local guild reports that the newspaper has hired a Seattle law firm that represents Starbucks and other companies that face unionizing.
“ADN management has also hired an attorney from Littler Mendelson, a notoriously anti-union law firm,” the union said, adding that the money would be “better spent investing in our newsroom and our community.”
We all know the Daily News is a failing institution. Reporters demanding higher pay will only speed up the demise of the paper. The reporters may be thinking that they are securing their jobs but if no one reads the paper, or pays for it, then there will be no jobs.
What good is higher pay going to do when you now have to pay union dues?
All the union will do is get them some sort of buyout when the paper closes.
I am so BUMMED that Binkley said, “No.” He should have eagerly accepted his socialist brothers an sisters, thereby driving up costs as the “newspaper” and driving down productivity. It would have hastened the demise of this propaganda-spewing rag.