Journalists at The State are unionizing!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Twitter: @thestateguild
Instagram: @thestateguild
TheStateNewsGuild@gmail.com
On March 31 the journalists of The State newspaper moved to form South Carolina’s largest newspaper union, The State News Guild.
“Our mission is to foster an environment in which The State’s journalists can continue producing works of truth, accountability, culture and compassion without constant worry of professional insecurity,” The State News Guild’s mission statement says. “We will fight for a fair deal while striving for a positive relationship with management. Organizing can be adversarial, but it must always be based on respect and understanding. We believe in The State and its mission, and we want it to succeed.”
Reporters, photographers and newsroom producers at the newspaper in South Carolina’s capital city have signed cards expressing a desire to be represented by the Washington-Baltimore News Guild Local 32035 of the Communications Workers of America. The CWA represents more than 700,000 media professionals across the United States and Canada.
Because of a high level of support for unionizing in the newsroom, we are requesting immediate, voluntary recognition from our paper’s management and the McClatchy Company.
McClatchy, The State’s owner, is a 164-year-old news company that owns 30 newspapers across the country, and emerged from bankruptcy in September 2020 as a privately-held company owned by Chatham Asset Management. Since then, the company has voluntarily recognized unions in other newsrooms, including at our sister paper the Island Packet in Hilton Head, SC. The State News Guild asks for similarly swift recognition.
In recent years, the news industry has experienced sharp drops in advertising revenue and newsroom staffing, and those trends have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Last summer, The State shut down its print operation in Columbia and moved out of its longtime home on Shop Road. Nationwide, the number of working newspaper reporters has been cut in half in the past decade, according to Pew Research.
Journalists at The State do not want to work under the threat of layoffs or cutbacks. We seek to protect our jobs, our paychecks and benefits as well as promote pay equity and diversity in our newsroom. We want to protect our ability to deliver the news to South Carolinians as The State has done since 1891.
We look forward to charting the future for the capital city’s newspaper with our management colleagues so that this newsroom can continue.
