Unionized journalists at The Washington Submit stated they’d stage a 24-hour strike on Thursday to protest employees cuts and what they name administration’s failure to cut price in good religion in contract talks which have stretched on for 18 months.
The deliberate one-day walkout comes weeks after William Lewis, former writer of The Wall Road Journal, was named chief govt and writer of the Submit because the venerable Washington every day newspaper was projecting a year-end lack of $100 million.
The Submit is considered one of many information retailers struggling to plot a sustainable enterprise mannequin within the many years because the web upended the economics of journalism and digital promoting charges plummeted.
Executives on the Submit, which is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, stated on the time of the Lewis announcement that they had been providing voluntary buyouts throughout the corporate in a bid to cut back worker headcount by about 10% and shrink the scale of the newsroom to about 940 journalists.
The Washington-Baltimore Information Guild, which represents greater than 1,000 editorial, promoting and different non-news employees on the Submit, stated mismanagement by the earlier writer led to just about 40 layoffs final yr, and the corporate was now looking for to chop one other 240 jobs by way of buyouts.
Representatives for the newspaper’s administration didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for touch upon the labor dispute.
In response to the union, administration has threatened to impose extra layoffs if too few staffers settle for voluntary severance packages.
“Meaning fewer Submit staff making the essential journalism that retains our communities knowledgeable and holds our public officers accountable,” the Guild stated in a web-based assertion.
Furthermore, after 18 months of contract negotiations, “the corporate is refusing to pay us what we’re price or cut price in good religion,” the union stated on the social media platform X, previously often called Twitter. “So on Dec. 7, we’re strolling off the job for 24 hours.”
In a Guild-produced on-line video, quite a few Submit journalists, together with chief Ukraine correspondent Siobhan O’Grady, seem sequentially on digicam pledging to affix a whole bunch of colleagues within the strike and urging readers to “respect our picket line by avoiding Washington Submit journalism” in the course of the walkout.
The minute-long video ends with the chorus, “as a result of we’re price extra, price greater than our bosses are providing.”
Lewis is about to tackle his duties from Jan. 2, 2024, changing Patty Stonesifer, who turned interim chief govt in June, and Fred Ryan, who stepped down in August after a nine-year stint as writer and CEO.