For the first time in the legacy paper’s history, the Chicago Tribune’s reporters, photographers and other uioniozed newsroom employees walked off the job on Thursday as part of a 24-hour strike as negotiations for a contract enter their fifth year.
Staff members gathered outside the Freedom Center — the Tribune’s printing press since 1981 — alongside Scabby the Rat inflatables chanting “fair contact now,” among other things.
They were joined by journalists and production workers at seven newsrooms across the country who also took part in the 24-hour strike to demand that management pay fair wages and not eliminate their 401(k) match benefits, which have already been cut for non-union employees, according to a news release from The NewsGuild-CWA, which represents the employees.
The union said much of the staff has gone without pay raises since Alden Global Capital took over in 2021 , in addition to facing significant buyouts and cuts, with the newsroom losing 35 positions since 2021. The company also sold the Freedom Center for $200 million to Bally’s to be made into a casino .
The union said it was offered two $1,500 bonuses in exchange for pay raises and the removal of their 401(k) match, which they said amounted to a pay cut. A bargaining session is set for mid-February.
“None of us got into journalism for the money, but we can’t do it for free,” said Joe Mahr, a reporter for the Tribune who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2004, who was on the picket line Thursday morning. “There are countless people who aren’t on this picket line because they had to leave.”
The union also said it conducted a pay study in June and found that women were paid 10% less than their male counterparts in the same roles, and employees of color were paid 10% less than their white counterparts in the same jobs. For Black women at the paper, that meant making 20% less than white men doing the same work.
Representatives for Alden have not responded to requests for comment.
Darcel Rockett, a features writer for the Tribune, said Alden has passed the buck on correcting race and gender-based pay disparities by saying that was how it was before the hedge fund bought the paper.
“It shouldn’t be this way,” Rockett said. “They should be embarrassed by it. ... I really hope the needle moves today.”
She said the pay disparities also had the potential to scare away a more diverse set of journalists from applying to the paper — damaging its ability to give context and history to many stories as well as harming the trust building process for the newsroom.
“[A diverse newsroom] brings a nuance that’s not typically there,” Rockett said. “The more people we have that look like people we’re reporting on, it’s a right step toward making that happen.”
Rick Kogan — a Chicago media giant who has worked for the Tribune, Sun-Times, Chicago Daily News and WGN — also said he worried about the paper’s future, specifically its ability to draw in new journalists as the old guard attempts to retire in the face of potential 401(k) cuts.
“I look at all these younger people and I think of the incredible career I’ve had, and I worry they will not be able to experience, on any sort of level, that kind of run,” Kogan said. “I know most of these kids and they’re committed. … I don’t have a lot of faith [but] I hope they’re listening.”
Jake Sheridan, a Tribune reporter hired two years ago, said he sees a similar fate for other young reporters, but that was why the union was fighting.
“I really want to be here at the Tribune for the rest of my career, I love the work I do,” Sheridan, a member of the contract action team, said. “But Alden’s ownership and their total disregard for us as workers makes it really hard to imagine a long term future here.”
The strike comes as the media industry faces a significant time in labor struggles, as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has been on strike for more than a year while the Los Angeles Times, San Antonio Report, several publications under Condé Nast and the Alden-owned New York Daily News have all staged walkouts over the past month in response to job cuts.
In Chicago, the Chicago Defender went on strike in 1961, according to NewsGuild-CWA.
Three production unions struck the Tribune in 1985. The walkout by roughly 1,000 members of the Typographical Union. the Mailers Union and the Web Printing Pressmen’s Union initially forced the newspaper to reduce the number of editions amd their size.
But Thursday’s walkout at the Tribune marked the first editorial workers at any of city’s largest circulation dailies — including the Sun-Times and the now defunct Chicago Daily News — have gone on strike.
“This is Chicago, we don’t back down. They’re a bunch of punks from New York and we’re not scared of those guys,” said Ray Long, a Tribune investigative reporter. “If they don’t have a desire to negotiate with us fairly, they will feel our wrath and wish that they never saw this day come alive.”