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"Fast food workers, car wash workers,
retail workers, and others have been
fighting for better pay and working
conditions, as well as a $15 minimum
wage. In many ways, they have been
successful in approaching that goal,
but they are not in unions, yet."
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As
newspaper staff levels have dropped precipitously over the past few
years, the quality of most dailies has dropped at about the same rate.
Without staff, there is less news covered and the information necessary
for a free people to do their democratic business becomes harder to
come by. Yes, there is a ton of information that is spewed out
online every day, but a good citizen has to be careful about the source
of that information that is passed off as news.
More and more people are getting their news from online sources and
many of those sources are not of the quality that we might have been
accustomed to in past generations. As partisan as they
might have been in times past, there was a process that young news
gatherers had to endure to become a reporter. There was
tradition, there was training, there was education (usually by peers),
and the business of the newspaper was likely to be at the same
geographical location for a long time.
With online publications, it is more difficult to make sure that what
you are reading is up to the standard of the “old days,” when things
were more ordered, at least in terms of the abilities and skills of the
researchers and writers. So, if one is careful, there is
plenty of good information that can be obtained from the
Internet. You just have to be certain of the source and the
integrity of the individual writer and, of course, the website
itself.
It took years for newspaper reporters and columnists to realize that
they did not have to spend their entire lives as “ink-stained
wretches,” as they came to describe themselves. They were working
for paltry wages and they could be fired at will and often were
fired. In the mid-1930s, in the heat of union organizing that
resulted from the newly minted National Labor Relations Act, they
realized that they, too, could form a union. They did and it was
The Newspaper Guild, which in short order secured contracts, which
improved wages, working conditions, health insurance, and
pensions.
Improvements continued to be won by the Guild, from that time to this
current time of contraction of the entire newspaper industry. But
the union could not save newspapers or their reporters, editors,
columnists, and all of the other workers in the company. The
newspaper staffers are doing what they can, but their power is limited
by outside forces: the war that has been waged for generations
against workers and unions by corporations and politicians, an economy
that has been in crisis for years, courts that have been hostile to
workers, and laws that were passed over a long period of time that have
kept workers in an inferior position to big business and right wing
politicians.
Now, however, there is a new source for news and a large percentage of
America is getting its news from Internet news websites. Much of
it may be questionable as far as its accuracy and reliability go, but
they do get it from there, especially among the 18-40 population.
The workers in those new news websites do not necessarily have to put
in the time and education to meet the standards that once
existed. In fact, anyone can start a site or a blog, without a
day of experience. The news websites that have huge followings
today are in the general mold of newspapers of old, when they employed
“ink stained wretches” to provide their “content.” Lots of the
writers, reporters, and columnists are good, some are excellent, and
many of them are men and women who cut their teeth on the low paid
staff of a daily newspaper. Often, these old newspaper types are
what can give the site the integrity they need to compensate for a
general lack of experience.
In 2015, however, the writers and editors are facing the same problems
that old newspaper reporters faced in the 1930s and they appear to be
willing to do something about it. They are joining
unions. No one likes to work for little or nothing, especially
when they are putting in the same kind of hours their counterparts did
for newspapers years ago. In their effort to unionize, they have
an advantage in that many news sites are liberal or progressive in
tenor and those who own or run them are in favor and support of unions.
When ThinkProgress (thinkprogress.com) staffers decided to organize
with the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the union reported that
management had agreed to voluntarily recognize their union. Other
Web-based news organizations have been unionized, either with the WGA
or the NewsGuild (formerly the Newspaper Guild) and more are
considering it. They are doing it for the same
reasons: stability in employment, equality in wages and benefits,
protection of the jobs, no matter who owns the enterprise.
It is true that the staff of news web sites is a small portion of
working America and, for the most part, the employers are not hostile
to either their workers or their union, it’s a start and a sign that
younger workers are aware of the benefits of unionization. In a
similar way, workers over the past few years have been “acting in
concert,” as provided to them by federal labor law and protected by the
same law.
Fast food workers, car wash workers, retail workers, and others have
been fighting for better pay and working conditions, as well as a $15
minimum wage. In many ways, they have been successful in
approaching that goal, but they are not in unions, yet.
That should come later, when they realize that they are part of
something bigger than their own workplace. There is a labor
movement out there, along with the unions, and workers are bound to
realize that.
Right now, some of the workers who are organizing themselves are being
helped and guided by unions, but they are not ready to join the union
just yet. There are untold thousands of workers in the low wage
service industries, unlike the news website outlets, but they are all
on the march. Government agencies have reported that unionized
workers earn about 27 percent more than non-union workers. That
statistic alone might cause unorganized workers to consider joining the
union. It could signal the second historic wave of unionization
in the U.S., second only to the period between the mid-1930s and
1954. That’ll be quite a revolution.
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BlackCommentator.com
Columnist, John Funiciello, is a long-time former newspaper reporter
and labor organizer, who lives in the Mohawk Valley of New York State.
In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they
struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food
producers and land developers. Contact Mr. Funiciello and BC.
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 is published every Thursday |
Executive Editor:
David A. Love, JD |
Managing Editor:
Nancy Littlefield, MBA |
Publisher:
Peter Gamble |
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