The NewsGuild of New York has unleashed a wave of unionization throughout the journalism business, having organized more than three dozen print, digital, and broadcast shops, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Over the past few years, the Guild’s organizing tear has resulted in the unionization of workplaces from BuzzFeed News to Mashable to Insider; from Time, New York magazine, and The New Yorker to Fortune, Forbes, and The Forward; from Sports Illustrated, NBC News Digital, and the Daily News to The New Republic, People, Pitchfork, Quartz, and various others. The NewsGuild of New York’s membership includes a larger number of influential and nationally prominent outlets than any other local chapter, which makes it an especially powerful force in media’s growing labor movement. But with further conquests in its sights, the Guild is now running low on money. An abrupt proposal for a dues increase to mitigate the shortfall has put union management, led by president Susan DeCarava, at odds with members from the two big legacy shops that pay its bills: Reuters and The New York Times.
“I’m deeply uncomfortable with the way that Susan and the Executive Council has pursued this and the questions raised about our current strategy of organizing,” Times reporter Michael Powell wrote Monday in an email circulated among a group of Times employees that made its way to my inbox. “This is not to lay all these problems at Susan’s feet—The Guild’s structural financial problems stretch back at least seven years, and through three administrations. But she chose to increase Guild staff…and to fire up organizing in many shops.… Susan has real strengths.… She has a muscular sense of where we are headed and the training and organization she has implemented are terrific. But married to those strengths is an in your face style that has not served her well.”
Some background: To pay for its meteoric expansion, the Guild has spent down its reserve funds and has been running a deficit since 2017, with reserves dropping from roughly $11 million in 2016 to just over $5 million in 2020. The current deficit is said to be about $1.5 million a year, while the Guild’s staff has grown from 10 in 2016 to 21 today. The problem is that newly organized outlets don’t start paying dues until the signing of their first contracts. That process can take a long time, which means the Guild’s expenses have outpaced revenues, and not by an insignificant degree. It also means that the lion’s share of revenues currently falls on the shoulders of Reuters and the Times, which together account for the overwhelming majority of paying membership. (Other dues-paying members, like The New Republic, The Nation, and the Daily Beast, are much smaller.)
To get the dollars flowing, Guild management wants to raise dues. “We want to ensure we have the financial capacity…to continue making our union stronger and better for all of us, and for the members who will continue the fight in the future,” the Guild says in its pitch. A vote on the matter is scheduled for June 1, but there’s a strong whiff of dissent in the air. On Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times unit council passed a resolution—36 to 8—asking the Guild to rescind the dues-increase proposal.
“The Guild expects some major organizing fights ahead, including a strike at Condé Nast, and they want enough money to keep up the fight,” Times reporter Nicholas Confessore wrote in another recent email that’s been circulating within the Times. (Vanity Fair is owned by Condé Nast, where unions have been formed at The New Yorker, Pitchfork, Ars Technica, and Wired; a potential strike is on the table at the former three publications.) “It is not clear to me why the Guild has been deficit spending at such a high burn rate for so long and is only now seeking to bring income in line with expenses,” Confessore continued. “I am told that warnings about the burn rate were conveyed to Guild leadership in the past, but that DeCarava and her team…believed it was important to keep the ranks growing.… Fundamentally, I think this is about asking current members to underwrite the costs of growing the Guild.” Or, as another source put it, “The Guild basically wants Times employees to underwrite the revolution.”
The proposal for a dues increase and the urgency around it has raised eyebrows. Until now, even very involved Guild members were not aware of “the depth of their financial problems,” as one member put it. Some members tried to convince DeCarava to hold off on the proposed increase, at least until the finalization of the latest Times contract, which is expected to wrap later this year, but she could not be persuaded. Some members also feel the Guild has been evasive in explaining the timing of the increase and why it is needed right now. Between the ongoing contract negotiations, the lingering pandemic, and the fact that everyone is still working remotely, according to the aforementioned Guild member, “there’s a broad sense that the timing of this is just abhorrent.”
The opposition, of course, is hardly uniform. After word got out that I was working on this story, I heard from more than a dozen Guild members—not just from the Times and Reuters but other publications as well—telling me why they support the proposed dues increase and DeCarava’s leadership overall. (For what it’s worth, I also heard from some dues-paying members who don’t work at Reuters or the Times, but echoed the misgivings about how the Guild is handling the situation.) “I believe in her plan for strengthening our union, including investing in strategic bargaining and continuing to organize new newsrooms,” said Amanda Hess, a Times critic-at-large and member of the Guild’s executive committee. “Every member will have the opportunity to vote yes or no on a dues increase. I don’t make the recommendation to increase our dues lightly, and I respect that not everyone agrees that it’s the best course of action. But I’m proud we’ll all be able to vote.”
“The union hasn’t asked for a hike in dues since I joined the Guild 12 years ago,” said Zachary Goelman, a Reuters video producer and union shop steward. “The cost of a cup of coffee on my corner—arguably just as important to me as my Guild health plan—has gone up several times in that same period. I’m willing to pay a bit more to ensure that journalists like me can bargain.” Another Reuters journalist told me, “Unlike some people, I don’t easily dismiss a few of the concerns I’ve heard from people, especially from those who are genuinely facing financial difficulties. That said, I do think people who are questioning the motives of the Guild in seeking the increase are misguided. I trust that the current administration is doing what it feels is best for the union and its future.”
The concerns this member alluded to were aired last week on a Guild–hosted Zoom session that several participants described as “contentious.” In one moment that multiple sources flagged for me, a Reuters journalist recalled an email exchange he’d had with a Guild official. The journalist had expressed to this official that while the proposed increase might not seem like a lot—it would generally amount to anywhere between a few hundred dollars and $1,000 more a year, depending on your salary—it could still mean a few months’ worth of groceries for someone in his position, in which one partner has been laid off due to the pandemic and the other is now the sole breadwinner. In the recollection of three participants, the Reuters journalist said the official responded with a suggestion that his household could seek public assistance. (The exact wording of the official’s response was subsequently shared with me: “I’m sorry to hear that your co-breadwinner is unemployed—I hope that you’ve been able to take advantage of any available assistance.”)
Others in the meeting pressed DeCarava for more information about the Guild’s finances, and for a detailed budget proposal. “It was frustrating for a lot of journalists who want to see more information,” one participant told me. In a more ominous query, someone asked, “If the NYT is paying 51% of all incoming dues, what would it do to the Guild if the NYT decertified and pulled out of the Guild?” Privately, some members have raised the possibility of the Times breaking away from the Guild and either joining a different union or forming its own, like Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal.
The Guild, for its part, provided a statement in response to the issues and concerns raised in this article: “We’re proud of our commitment to do whatever it takes to hold companies responsible for how they treat their workers. The 58 members of the Executive Committee of the NewsGuild of New York has, for the first time in the union’s history, unanimously recommended a revision to the Guild’s dues structure, which our full membership will vote on in June. Guild leaders across our 42 bargaining units are committed to the democratic process and encourage every member to participate in the vote. This is an opportunity to set the direction for our union for decades to come.”
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