Organizing Updates Around CWA - Long Beach Journalism Initiative

Long Beach Journalism Initiative, Inc.

Last week, workers for the Long Beach Post and the Long Beach Business Journal, both owned by Long Beach Journalism Initiative, Inc., protested and filed Unlawful Labor Practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging retaliatory firings of two workers for lawful union organizing activities. The workers are seeking representation from the Media Guild of the West (TNG-CWA Local 39213).

Jason Ruiz, a current city hall reporter for the Long Beach Post, alleges that workers lost faith in CEO Melissa Evans after she violated labor law by not compensating employees for work done while the company was transitioning to a non-profit 501(c)(3). Employees began the process of joining the union after letters to the Board of Directors were ignored.

“It became clear to us that they were not taking us seriously or at least not moving with the urgency that we thought they should be, given the things that we had outlined in that letter. We decided to start the unionization process to force our way to the table,” Ruiz said in an article for Daily49er.com. Of the planned layoffs, two of the nine workers had not originally been included. Those two last-minute additions were also union organizers.

“Melissa has also joked openly about firing people if they ever unionize the newsroom, and as you can see here, nobody’s laughing,” Ruiz went on to say.

Workers proposed taking pay cuts in order to retain staff, but Evans continued with the layoffs, cutting nine of its fourteen staff positions.

The workers took their complaints to the streets, marching with signs reading, “Give us back our jobs,” and “Don’t let the Post become a Ghost.” The march paused outside the residence of Board Member Matthew Kinley, where workers shouted for him to “do the right thing.”

Dennis Dean, former Long Beach Post Director of Operations and Product, created a GoFundMe page to help those workers who were laid off. Said Dean, “I was sad and I was angry about the legacy of the Post that we’ve built over the last decade and that [Evans] has essentially torpedoed 12 years of work in four months. Long Beach needs a newspaper with considerable size and power and ability to cover the city, and there’s no team better than these guys. So we’re together ‘til the end.”

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This post originally appeared on cwa-union.org.