Today, unionized nonprofit newsrooms across the country are standing shoulder-to-shoulder to demand that news industry leaders agree to common-sense guardrails around the implementation of artificial intelligence to protect the integrity, quality and accuracy of our journalism.
Let’s goooooo!! ✨👏🍾
Congratulations to all involved!
LETS GOOOOOO
This contract provides a strong foundation to build on down the line, and would not exist without years of organizing and hard work from dozens of past and present employees!
✅ Byline/ethics protections for editorial staff
✅ Staff can decline to participate in fundraising/marketing campaigns
✅ Guardrails on generative AI usage
✅ Guaranteed continuation of the company's 3% match for retirement accounts
✅ Better workplace safety guarantees
✅ Expanded leaves of absence, including for bereavement, abortion, vaccinations, and paid fellowships
✅ Additional paid holidays, including December 24th-January 1st
✅ Guarantees of editorial independence
✅ Limitations on any return-to-office mandate
Other big wins:
✅ Guaranteed severance in the event of layoffs
✅ Rollover and cashout of vacation time
✅ Company-subsidized transit passes
✅ Reimbursement for professional memberships, accreditations, and conferences/courses
✅ Coverage of moving expenses if employees are transferred between cities
We're coming away with some AMAZING wins. Last October, we secured an interim $70k salary floor for all Noisy Creek employees.
Our new contract enshrines that as the minimum starting salary, while also guaranteeing salary bumps for longtime staff, and annual cost of living adjustments.
After just over a year of bargaining, union employees at The Stranger, the Portland Mercury, EverOut, and Bold Type Tickets have just ratified their first-ever contract!
🥳 🎉 🥳 🎉
Street Roots' board of directors notified the NLRB that it will not voluntarily recognize the Street Roots Workers Guild on Dec. 9, and violated federal labor law by failing to post notice of our election by the end of the day yesterday. 1/
Yeah, @suzettesmith.bsky.social has been trying to recover @portlandmercury.bsky.social but Bluesky Support hasn't been very helpful yet.
We're in bargaining for our first contract this morning! This process takes weeks, at times, so it's a marathon—not a sprint. Today, management will present their response to our initial proposal.
This is fantastic—when I left The Stranger ten years ago, I was paid almost half that, at $40K. Their reporters are still way underpaid, but I'm glad to see them fight for and win a significant raise.
Public support is invaluable, and so we encourage you to support our friends at PBS Cascade Union. Our managers have proven they’re ready to invest in local journalism. We challenge Cascade PBS to do the same!
We'll be keeping Bluesky supporters more up to date, going forward. Because it’s not over yet! This deal is just an interim agreement. We are still bargaining a contract, and we still need y’all to back us in the next fight.
We did most of that outreach on Twitter, and it reached more than 120k people, which gave us the confidence to walk into a meeting last Wednesday and demand better for our workers. And we made a great fucking deal.
Thankfully, many of our supporters shared our outrage. We appreciate your kind words. We may have screenshotted them to revisit when we’re down...
Recap: Our Noisy Union—staff at The Stranger, Portland Mercury, EverOut, and Bold Type Tickets—learned on Fri Sept 21 that a Stranger position job listing offered a higher salary than our longest serving news reporter. We didn’t just get mad—we got organized.
We credit public pressure from our supporters as a massive influence on this outcome, and are grateful that the bosses heard us, particularly our new owner Brady Walkinshaw.
We did it! Noisy Union won raises of at least 20 percent and a new wage floor of $70k. Bringing everyone up to $70k means a $15k raise for some of our members!
Index News Media is preparing to voluntarily recognize our union! @indexmediaunion.bsky.social
You all should hear more from us about this sometime in the next couple days—maybe even today!
I’m proud of management for working with us to swiftly recognize our unionized workforce.
We’ve built a reputation on eating the rich and standing up for progressive values. We're asking Index Media to embody those values through voluntary recognition.
We realize the best way to ensure we are heard in shaping the future of this company, our roles, and our wages, is to form a union.
Index Media workers are deeply invested in our work, but we face uncertainty, ever-growing responsibilities, and wages far below those of our industry competitors.
For decades, workers at The Stranger, the Portland Mercury, EverOut, and Bold Type Tickets have fostered an alternative voice in Pacific Northwest media.
Today, we have asked the upper management at Index Media to voluntarily recognize our union.
