Local Newsrooms Organizing Amidst a Wave of Unionization in Media Organizations
We identified 162 individual unions formed by more than 9,500 workers in 224 media organizations in the United States between 2017 and 2022. Of the media organizations where workers have organized unions over the past five years, more than half, 54%, have been local newsrooms or a coalition of local newsrooms that formed one union. Of the individual media unions formed, just under half, 46%, represented local newsrooms. The APP-MPJ, a union of workers from three New Jersey newspapers, is an example of a coalition union.
Unions in local newsrooms tend to be smaller than unions of other media organizations, with an average of 49 members compared to an average of 89 members in nonlocal media unions. In addition, 35% of media union members between 2017 and 2022 are in local newsrooms.
Local Newsroom Unions
The remainder of our analyses focus specifically on unions formed in local newsrooms. As has been previously documented, union formation at media organizations has increased considerably in the past five years, and this is true for local newsrooms as well. In 2017, only six local newsrooms were part of an effort to unionize. Almost five times as many newsrooms, 29, took part in unionization efforts in 2018. Although 2019 and 2020 saw fewer local newsrooms engaged in labor organization, 2021 saw 40 local newsrooms form unions, a full third of newsrooms where unions were organized over the past five years. Through the first two months of 2022, three local news organizations were part of unionization efforts.
Outcomes of Unionization Efforts
We then examined the outcomes of unionization efforts by examining whether or not these unions had their representations certified. Unions can achieve certification of representation in one of two ways: voluntary recognition by management or by winning a representation election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Fully 90% of the unions that have been organized in local newsrooms have achieved representation.
Of the 108 local newsrooms that achieved representation, 65% did so through an NLRB-conducted election while 34% were voluntarily recognized by management.
Outcomes by Year
Overall, unions in local newsrooms have been more successful than not in gaining representation with increased success each year. In 2017, four of the six local newsrooms that participated in unionization efforts were successful, followed by 26 of 29 in 2018, 16 of 17 in 2019, and all 26 in 2020. In 2021, 35 of the 40 local newsrooms that unionized were successful. The outcomes of those efforts are not yet determined for the remaining five local newsrooms that unionized that year, and currently, two of the three local newsrooms that have sought to form unions in 2022 have yet to see any outcome to their efforts as well.