Why is Reviewed’s editorial staff forming a union?

Our organizing efforts began early 2022, in an environment of extreme turnover and high stress.

While the company went on a hiring spree to backfill the growing number of empty positions – a hiring spree which we’d later learn was justified through outrageous budget projections and impossible promises to Gannett – management did little to keep current employees onboard. 

In response to this, several employees began talking about how they felt unappreciated, underpaid, overworked, and disappointed in the lack of support coming from upper management. Through sharing our mutual frustrations, we linked up, got organized, and turned our concerns into actions!

We believe that Reviewed management and Gannett will not fix these problems on their own—they’ve already squandered several opportunities to do so. Instead, they’ve laid people off, ended our 401k matching program, and tried to make us forget about everything going wrong within Gannett using meaningless “awards” and social events. No one wants a pizza party, Chris. Thanks, but we’d prefer a living wage.

Why now?

We chose this date to go public in solidarity with our fellow Gannett newsrooms facing cutbacks and corporate austerity programs. Back in November, Mike Reed and Gannett leadership announced that they’d be instituting a mandatory week-long unpaid furlough starting on December 19th. This decision left our fellow workers without pay in the midst of a busy holiday season marked by record inflation and skyrocketing utility prices. Such measures are absolutely devastating to all the employees of Gannett, who, like us, already make too little and struggle to make ends meet as the cost of living continues to rise; now on top of this, they have to worry about going a week without income? It’s just cruel.

Reviewed was one of the few newsrooms in all of Gannett that was not required to take this mandatory furlough. We were told that because we’re Gannett’s “money-makers,” we get to be excluded from this cruelty. But know that that’s just not fair. 

We’re going public today to send a message to Mike Reed and the executive leadership of Gannett, to show them that we stand in solidarity with every other newsroom in the company; we refuse to allow their tactics of divide-and-conquer to lay the burden of their mismanagement on the backs of labor.

To our fellow Gannett workers around the country, we are with you and are fighting to show the world that Gannett can do better for its employees. Stand with us and join the struggle. Organize your workplace today. If you want to start a union in your newsroom, feel free to contact us at reviewedunion@gmail.com and we’ll get you connected to the right people.

What are the issues?

Our staff is organizing to fight for more competitive pay, affordable health insurance that includes mental health services, a clear managed time off policy, reasonable severance pay amid any layoffs, overtime pay for holidays and weekends, and clear job descriptions. 

We demand a contract that allows remote workers to remain remote. In other words, we believe Reviewed is a hybrid workplace and should remain that way—no one should be forced to work in-person unless that was included in their previous job description. 

We demand just-cause and performance-based due process for termination, especially during a time where Gannett has been quick to lay off large chunks of the company whenever they feel like it.

What happens next?

On Monday December 19th, 2022 at 9am ET, NewsGuild submitted union authorization cards signed by an overwhelming supermajority of our staff to the National Labor Relations Board, formally announcing our petition to unionize. Alongside that, management received an email from the Reviewed Union organizing committee  demanding voluntary recognition of our union so that we can begin bargaining for a fair contract right away, rather than waiting several weeks for an official vote which they know that we’ll win. 

If they choose not to voluntarily recognize the union and ignore the demands of a supermajority of their staff, then we’ll move into an 8-week long campaign, at the end of which will be an official vote with the NLRB to determine if more than 50% of our union eligible staff want the Reviewed Union to bargain on our behalf. 

During this time, we will likely be bombarded with anti-union messaging from Gannett and Reviewed management, trying to convince us that the union is a “third party” which we don’t need, or that unionizing is “bad for the company.” These union-busting campaigns are nothing more than a reminder that Gannett is terrified of the power we wield when we act collectively to fight for what we deserve. They know as well as we do that we only get what we’re organized to take, so they’ll fight us every step of the way, but we’re ready for it.

Who is and isn’t eligible for the union?

Our Union represents the editorial department, so all workers who report to our Editor in Chief, which, in addition to our various writers and editors, also includes teams like Art, Audience and Production (and more). Simply put, if you’re part of Reviewed’s editorial staff, and don’t have hire-fire power, then you’re eligible.

But if you work at Reviewed, you know that many of us have obscure job descriptions, and often arbitrarily assigned ‘official’ job titles. You’ve likely also struggled to navigate our labyrinthine org chart, so you know that determining who is considered management and who is union-eligible can be fairly unclear. 

If you’re unsure if you’re eligible or not, feel free to email us at reviewedunion@gmail.com and we can put you in touch with our legal support from the NewsGuild to investigate.

Do other publications have unions?

Absolutely! There are at least 40 unions just within Gannett, all of them also with the NewsGuild. These include Arizona Republic, Asbury Park Press, Detroit Free Press, New Jersey Herald, Palm Beach Post, Delaware News Journal, Naples Daily News, Lakeland Ledger, Pekin Daily Times, Rockford Register Star, State Journal-Register, IndyStar, South Bend Tribune, Springfield News-Leader, Bergen Record, My Central Jersey, New Jersey Herald, York Daily Record, Erie Times News, The Providence Journal, Knoxville News Sentinel, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Austin American-Statesman, Kitsap Sun, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Sheboygan Press, and more. 

Other media companies like us that have unions, specifically through NewsGuild, include Wirecutter, BuzzFeed News, Wired, Insider, Bon Appétit, Glamour, Allure, GQ, Teen Vogue, Self, and many more. 

Why are we joining the Boston Newspaper Guild (BNG, TNG-CWA Local 31245)?

The Boston Newspaper Guild proudly represents about 300 employees including reporters, editors, page designers, web producers, and many more. The Boston Newspaper Guild is a local of  The NewsGuild (TNG-CWA) and parent union Communications Workers of America (CWA), which is the largest union for editorial workers in the country.

As stated on their website, “The purpose of the Guild shall be to advance the economic interests and to improve the working conditions of its members; to guarantee, as far as it is able, equal employment and advancement opportunity in the industry and constant honesty in news, editorials, advertising, and business practices; to raise the standards of journalism and ethics of the industry; to foster friendly cooperation with all other workers; and to promote industrial unionism within the jurisdiction of the Guild.”

Will forming a union threaten Reviewed’s finances?

Many of the demands that we are organizing around —such as remote work protections, job security, editorial independence, transparency, and accountability—are not financial. The improvements in pay and benefits that we will negotiate for at the bargaining table will be just that: a negotiation. If Reviewed and Gannett claim poverty in negotiations, they will be legally obligated to show us that they cannot afford the improvements we ask for. Ultimately, we’ll vote on a contract that we are all happy with, and we would never demand a contract that would threaten the financial stability of the company. 

Can you be fired or retaliated against for supporting the organizing drive?

Nope! If management tries to retaliate against you for supporting the union, your coworkers (and the NewsGuild) will have your back. Petitioning to form a union, and organizing your coworkers to do so, is protected concerted activity under the National Labor Relations Act. Retaliation against any of us for engaging in protected activity is, by law, an “unfair labor practice” and, as we saw recently with Starbucks workers, punishable by the NLRB. We’ll fight ULPs from the shop floor (or the Slack thread!) to an NLRB hearing. 

Furthermore, as of December 19th, 2022 at 9am, every union eligible staffer is protected by “laboratory conditions,” meaning that management cannot make significant changes to their working conditions or pursue disciplinary action without demonstrating to the union and the NLRB that such discipline was unrelated to union activity. And after the vote is finalized (or Gannett chooses to recognize our union voluntarily), we are protected by “status quo” rights until we’ve won a contract. 

Will this make the workplace more antagonistic?

Organizing a union is a process that brings us together, sharing our mutual concerns about our workplace and our working conditions, and acting together to change them. It’s hard when you’re working remotely, as many of us do, and it’s easy to feel alone. But building this union has united us in a way that felt impossible just a few months ago; as Sara put in her testimonial, “being part of a union fulfills my desire to feel a sense of community in the workplace.” You’re not alone in worrying about layoffs or feeling undervalued at work or not knowing how you’re supposed to pay your bills. We’re all in this together, and when we fight together, we win together.

The truth is that our workplace is already antagonistic, exactly because we’re all feeling this way. As long as we lack basic protections like just-cause for terminations, as long as we’re paid pennies, as long as Gannett can impose mandatory furloughs on our fellow workers around the country, our workplace is an antagonistic one – a fundamental antagonism, between labor and management. No-one should feel unsure if their job is safe or stress about making ends meet; we’re organizing to put an end to that.

Now, Gannett and Reviewed management have a choice: they can push back against the clear will of a supermajority of our staff, or they can voluntarily recognize our union and begin negotiations with us as a unit. And if they choose the former (which we suspect they will) then it will have been them deciding to make the workplace “more antagonistic,” by dragging us into captive audience meetings or attempting to isolate us from our coworkers.

If we were really a family, if they really cared about us, they would listen to the voices of our supermajority, the voices of a united staff that has spent months building our union, and recognize us voluntarily. We want to sit down at the bargaining table with Gannett and negotiate a fair contract, so that we can live without struggling to pay rent or worrying if we’ll be employed in a few months. We love our jobs – if we didn’t, we’d have quit long ago, instead of spending nights and weekends organizing to make a better for all of us by ensuring that labor has a seat at the table.

What kinds of things will be negotiated into a contract?

Right now, we’re demanding more competitive pay, affordable health insurance that includes mental health services, a clear managed time off policy, reasonable severance pay amid any layoffs, overtime pay for holidays and weekends, clear job descriptions, editorial independence, a fair remote working environment, just-cause and performance-based due process for termination. 

We’re fighting for these demands because they represent the shared concerns of many of our fellow workers, but we know this list isn’t exhaustive. If there’s something that you’d like to see in a fair contract, please reach out and get involved! We would love to have your voice at the table when we enter negotiations. 

This is your contract, just as much as it is our contract. We are Reviewed, united. We are in this together. 

What are membership dues?

Boston Newsguild’s membership dues are 1.38%, but this doesn’t go into effect until after we have a signed contract, and we won’t agree to a contract that leaves any of us making less than before.

More importantly, dues aren’t just a “fee” or checkoff that we’re paying to receive services from some outside organization; we are the union, and these funds (not to mention our collective control over them) go towards entrenching our position and equipping us to fight back against Gannett, to advance the struggle for workplace democracy and the conditions we deserve. 

Will having a union prevent advocating for things like raises and promotions individually?

Nope! When we enter “laboratory conditions” and then status quo, you might hear managers say things things like, “Well I’d love to give you a raise right now, but with this whole union thing, my hands are tied!” That’s blatantly false. They could easily give you a raise. They’d just have to tell our union, and then we’d say “sure, give it to them!” We are fighting for better working conditions for every one of our members,  so why would we ever refuse your boss trying to give you a raise?