NY Daily News Staffers Form Union

Journalists at The Daily News, the 101-year-old New York tabloid that has fallen on hard times after an ownership change, pay cuts and sweeping layoffs, said on Friday that they had formed a union.

The NY Times reports newsroom employees at the paper, once a significant voice for the city’s working class, have not had representation since the mid-1990s, when its owner, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, effectively broke their affiliation with the Newspaper Guild of New York.

Workers at The Daily News said they had secured the signatures of more than 80 percent of newsroom staff members and had organized under the same union, now called the NewsGuild of New York. They said they had asked the newspaper’s owner, Tribune Publishing, for voluntary recognition.

Union representation for newsroom employees took a hit in the 1990s. Mr. Zuckerman forced journalists to reapply for their old jobs when he bought the struggling Daily News, and Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the rival New York Post, managed to publish daily editions even as the paper’s staff members stood on a picket line.

Since 2018, newsrooms operated by the company that have gone union include The Chicago Tribune, The Hartford Courant and The Orlando Sentinel.

At The Daily News, discussions about rejoining the NewsGuild formally started in April, about a month after staff members started working remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last summer, with workers continuing to do their jobs away from the office, Tribune Publishing said it had permanently closed The Daily News’s newsroom in Lower Manhattan.

In addition to the newsroom shutdowns, Tribune Publishing permanently cut pay for employees making more than $67,000 annually and instituted three-week furloughs for those making between $40,000 and $67,000.

Tribune Publishing’s largest shareholder, the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, known for slashing costs at the newspapers it controls, has increased its influence over the company. In a letter to the Tribune board in December, Alden proposed buying the remaining shares in the company for $14.25 apiece. That offer is still pending.