The NewsGuild-CWA, which now represents over 25,000 workers in 519 workplaces, has experienced a tilt upward in organizing activity and member-driven labor actions in recent years. According to an Axios analysis, since 2020 an average of 23 media unions have formed annually, compared to just 8 per year in the decade prior.
Amid severe industry downsizing, unions are seeking to secure contracts and their ranks are growing through campaigns in both digital and legacy media, including local newsrooms and tech staff, according to the NewsGuild.
Early this spring, members of the Guild at ProPublica, one of the most successful, respected and largest nonprofit newsrooms in America, overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. Out of the roughly 150 journalists, copyeditors, videographers and other newsroom workers in the Guild, 92% of members voted to walk off the job and they did so on April 8 in a one-day strike.
ProPublica’s union, which was first recognized in 2023, has been negotiating the first collective bargaining agreement around the boilerplate issues of job security and cost-of-living wage increases, but interestingly it is also zeroing in on an article that would prohibit ProPublica from laying off employees due to AI adoption. If no settlement is reached in the coming months, the union has threatened another walkout.
Other news organizations have also been simmering over how newsroom employees and the unions that represent them will be impacted by the sweeping changes that are coming with AI. According to Neiman Journalism Lab, AI was referenced in 43 contracts negotiated by units of the NewsGuild-CWA.
Join our newsletter
In three large metro newspapers, The Miami Herald, the Sacramento Bee and the Kansas City Star, unions have filed grievances against parent company McClatchy after senior executives began introducing a “content scaling agent,” or CSA, which is an AI summarization tool powered by Anthropic’s Claude. Management at McClatchy, a respected news organization fighting for sustainability as it operates 30 daily newspapers and dozens of other weekly and digital news organizations across 15 states, wants to place a bet on this AI tool to help find and segment new audiences. Unions representing its journalists are not so thrilled about what it might mean for the quality of what is written under their byline. The union sent a letter to management on May 1. That was followed with a quiet revolt by dozens of unionized reporters at the three papers withholding their bylines on stories and demanding more input on how such decisions are made.
At the New York Times, the Times Guild, representing some 1,500 members from the news organization’s editorial employees, has developed a subcommittee specifically focused on issues surrounding the use of AI in the newsroom. The unit sent a letter in early April to the publisher and senior news executives, stating that the Times’ standards on AI were “woefully inadequate,” citing “serious concerns” after a freelancer was found to have plagiarized an article using AI.
A member of the guild bargaining committee laid out for Axios some of the core issues that the union is seeking in relation to AI, including a mandate for “clearer disclosures around the technology’s use in its journalism.” And further clarity around “the way Times journalists’ name, image and likeness would be protected.”
Senior management at the Times wrote in a note to union members that its latest contract proposal addresses the guild’s main concerns, which in addition to AI include health care, wages, remote work and unionizing The Athletic. Axios, which formed a content partnership with OpenAI, quoted the management letter to the union which “gave assurances that our use of A.I. would be informed by our current best-in-class guidelines and standards while leaving flexibility to iterate as the technology evolves.”
