Push for Unionization an “Accelerant” for Newsroom Improvement

As more journalists turn toward collective bargaining to fight for salary transparency and workplace diversity, the fight to unionize hasn’t always been successful— but leading journalists say even failed attempts at creating unions have increased the pressure on media outlets to address their employee’s criticisms and boost progress in the newsroom.

Darious Dixon, an associate editor at Politico, said the uptick in unionization efforts has, in large part, been a direct result of a lack of salary transparency, a problem he says that he’s been lobbying leadership to address for years.

It wasn’t until Politico staff recently mounted their efforts to unionize that leadership addressed Dixon’s concerns.

“We had a random email come out last week saying that they had corrected a lot of people’s salaries across the organization and that they’re finally going to conduct a third-party review of salaries, something I’ve been asking for about three years,” Dixon said. “At the same time lo and behold we’re hearing stories about the push for a union.”

As it turns out, the presence of unions has been proven to improve pay equity in the workplace. A 2021 study by NewsGuild, the nation’s largest union representing media workers, found that newsrooms with union contracts had gender and racial pay gaps that were more than $5,000 smaller than those without.

Dixon can’t say for sure whether or not there was a correlation between the announcement and increasing calls for unionization among employees, but says “union staff has been an accelerant” when it comes to enacting change.

Carla Correa, the deputy director of early programs at The New York Times, has seen the effect of unions on staff in her newsroom. One of the most important benefits, Correa said, was making sure employees are properly compensated for their work.

“One thing I very much support is that you should not be doing your work for free,” Correa said. “You should be paid and paid fairly.”

While Correa isn’t currently a part of the union at the New York Times due to federal labor laws that restrict management from joining bargaining groups, the seasoned reporter said that unions help to make sure journalists are paid for freelance work and extra labor.

Workers in newsrooms across the country agree. In the first seven months of 2021 alone, NewsGuild gained 1,500 new members across almost 30 media outlets, shattering its previous annual organizing record.

But pay isn’t the only thing new union members are concerned about.

When Dixon joined the team at Politico in 2010, he became one of just three Black journalists in the newsroom— his experience isn’t an isolated one.

As of 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that white men account for half of all newsroom staff, despite making up less than a third of the country's population.

Improving workplace diversity has consistently remained one of the leading factors of the explosion of media workers joining unions across the country, Jon Schleuss, president of the NewsGuild, told Axios.

For industry leaders like Mizell Stewart III, the vice president of News, Performance, Talent and partnerships at USA Today and Gannett, the success of the effort to diversify newsrooms is of paramount importance for the future of the field.

"We are not going to survive as a news industry unless we can get our coverage, as well as the makeup of our teams, to better reflect the demographic of America as it is today" Stewart said.