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Statement by the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild Local 1:
Today, @ThePlainDealer laid off 10 of the Guild’s members, leaving the newspaper with four remaining reporters. The move follows the layoffs last week of 18 Guild members and four managers.
Today, @ThePlainDealer laid off 10 of the Guild’s members, leaving the newspaper with four remaining reporters. The move follows the layoffs last week of 18 Guild members and four managers.
PD Editor @TimsTakeCLE said it was difficult to watch “friends and talented colleagues leave our newsroom.” He said the 10 journalists leaving made voluntary decisions to be laid off. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It was the PD who decided to lay off union workers.
The PD and its owners put dedicated journalists in an impossible situation to embarrass them by banning most of them from reporting on Cleveland, Cuyahoga County & the state. That meant being kept from covering the topics they know best and in many cases are regarded as experts.
If not for the Guild’s collective bargaining agreement, the union would not have been able to negotiate with the company an exit that allowed these workers to keep their earned severance and have health care during a pandemic.
Three of the leaders of the Plain Dealer unit of the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild — Chair @GChristCLE and Vice Chairs @RachelDissell and @LauraDeMarcoCle — are among today’s layoffs.
The Guild stands with its brothers and sisters who remain: @CanigliaJohn, @susanglaser, @steven_litt and @terrypluto. Subscribe, support them and read their work.
Warsinkey noted the good work at http://cleveland.com , a newsroom he doesn’t manage. The Guild wishes the people running that site had been as fair in sharing union journalists’ work as @ThePlainDealer was in featuring their stories and photos in the paper’s print edition.
To those reporters who will take on the beats and topics laid off reporters care so much about, the Guild wishes you the best. The industry is only going to get tougher.
Once the union workers have all been picked off, the company will look for other places to cut. Stick together and protect yourselves. One way to do that? Start a union.
The journalists laid off from @ThePlainDealer today include:
