Nov. 5, 2024 11a
(WGTD)---Newsroom employees at the Racine Journal Times are praising their employer for not blocking their attempts to unionize.
Less than three weeks after the paper’s editorial staff announced a plan to organize, the Racine NewsGuild was voluntarily recognized by Lee Enterprises as part of the Kenosha Newspaper Guild bargaining unit. The Iowa-based company owns both papers.
The next step is for the Racine NewsGuild to negotiate a contract.
According to the union, four Journal Times newsroom employees were recently laid off, just two days after the union-organizing attempt was announced.
The bright side is the paper agreed to give the four preferential consideration for future job openings at the Journal Times and Kenosha News during the next 12 months.
The umbrella labor group for workers at both papers is a sector of communications Workers of America. It represents 25,000 journalists and other medica workers in the U-S, Canada and Puerto Rico, including the New York times, the Washington Post and the AP.
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