In response to “significant” planned layoffs, unionized staff at the Los Angeles Times They launch a one-day strike on Friday.
The strike, which Los Angeles Times Guild is calling the first union strike in the newspaper’s newsroom in response to layoffs that management announced Thursday as a way to reduce the newspaper’s 2024 budget. Staff members from across the country will participate, the union said. He Times Guild represents about 400 editorial employees at the newspaper, including reporters, photographers and editors.
Coinciding with the strike, the union will hold a “Rally to Save Local Journalism” in downtown Los Angeles at the Gloria Molina Grand Park on Friday at noon. “The management of the Los Angeles Times has announced that it intends to imminently lay off a significant number of journalists and is asking the Guild to remove seniority protections in our union contract so that they have much more freedom to choose who to lay off,” the report said. Times Guild, which is affiliated with the Media Guild of the West, said in a statement about the strike. “This will greatly harm our ability to deliver the accountability journalism so important to Southern California.”
The union can call a strike because it has been working for months under an expired contract, which it is currently negotiating with the newspaper’s management. In a comment, a Los Angeles Times The spokesperson said: “Los Angeles Times has not missed a day of publication in 142 years and we will publish tomorrow. “We are disappointed by the union’s decision, but we respect their right to strike.”
He TimesThe union first alerted its members that cuts would be imminent in an email on Wednesday. “The Negotiating Committee cannot say how many union members the company wants to fire. But friends: this is the big one,” said the president of the Media Guild of the West and Times Journalist Matt Pearce wrote in an email to members that day. Times Management then informed the editorial staff of the planned layoffs on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Times said in a statement toward Times Thursday that the planned cuts are a result of the need to “reduce our operating budget heading into this year.” The spokesperson added: “The most difficult decisions to make are those that affect our employees, and we do not make those decisions lightly. “We continue to review revenue projections for this year and take a very careful look at expenses and what our organization can support.”
The cuts come a little more than a week later. Times Executive editor and journalism veteran Kevin Merida announced he was leaving the paper after “considerable soul-searching” and conversations with the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.
The union said in its statement Thursday that its current demands on management include revealing the number of employees the newspaper wants to lay off or the salary figure it intends to reduce. The union also wants its interim leaders to hold a public meeting and explain their plan for how the newspaper will increase revenue and wants union representatives to participate in the search for a new executive editor.
“We built a union to safeguard the future of the Los Angeles Times and its journalists and that mission has not changed,” NewsGuild-CWA International President Jon Schleuss, who previously worked at the Times, said in a statement. “The owner can do the right thing by working with journalists to find a solution that is humane and does the right thing for an international community that depends on Los Angeles Times inform”.