On the heels of an unprecedented 24-day labor strike late last year, around 20 journalists at the 117-year-old Fort Worth Star-Telegram have ratified the only union contract at a Texas newspaper. The union victory comes after more than two years of difficult negotiations and forms part of a surge in nationwide newsroom organizing since the mid-2010s as journalists have increasingly fought back against corporate predation in a struggling industry. Workers at two other Texas papers, in Dallas and Austin, are still bargaining for union contracts after roughly two years.
Before launching the labor strike on November 28—likely the first open-ended newsroom work stoppage in Texas history—Kaley Johnson, a justice reporter at the Star-Telegram and vice president of the paper’s union, the Fort Worth NewsGuild, said negotiations were largely stuck in the mud. The Star-Telegram, which serves the state’s fifth-largest city and politically crucial Tarrant County, is owned by the McClatchy Company, a chain of about 30 papers nationwide. In turn, McClatchy is now controlled not by the family that ran it from the 19th century until 2020, but by the New Jersey-based hedge fund Chatham Asset Management. These corporate profiteers, per Johnson, were unwilling to move from a wage floor of $45,000 or consider other demands for months on end.
“The main reason we went on strike was because they weren’t negotiating at all; they were committed to stalling tactics and stonewalling,” she said. Once the work stoppage began, McClatchy swiftly cut off health insurance for the strikers and even posted temporary jobs to replace the journalists. Meanwhile, the workers raised some $51,000 on GoFundMe to sustain the effort. Suddenly, a few weeks into the stoppage, the company offered a new wage floor of $52,000 for current employees and $50,000 for future hires, along with other concessions on layoff procedures and bereavement leave.
