Journalists of Orlando Sentinel announce union organizing campaign

ORLANDO, Fla. — Journalists at the Orlando Sentinel took a major step Tuesday toward forming a union, the Sentinel Guild, part of The NewsGuild-CWA.  

Organizers for the union filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board and requested voluntary recognition from Tribune Publishing, the paper’s parent company. If the company declines to recognize the Sentinel Guild, employees will vote on forming a union in an election supervised by the NLRB. 

Members of the union organizing committee presented local management with the request for voluntary recognition after 78% of eligible staffers signed cards signaling their desire to be represented by the Sentinel Guild. The group will become a unit of Local 3108, a local chapter of The NewsGuild-CWA, the nation’s largest union for journalists and other news industry employees.

The Sentinel Guild will cover approximately 50 reporters, editors, photographers, columnists and newsroom staff. 

The decision to unionize comes as the Orlando Sentinel has shrunk from more than 300 journalists to fewer than 90 in the past 15 years. In November, hedge fund Alden Global Capital, known as “the destroyer of newspapers,” disclosed it has become Tribune Publishing’s largest shareholder.  

Gabrielle Russon, who has been a Sentinel reporter since November 2014, said, “Journalism is my passion. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. It’s also a career where every single day, I worry about losing my job. Our newsroom has been demoralized by layoffs and buyouts and reapplying for our positions. The newsroom is a sea of empty desks. As the newspaper industry continues to struggle, I’m fearful of what happens next if Alden gains control of the company. I support a union because we want a voice at the table to demand our owners invest in us and support local journalism.”

Jason Garcia, a 14-year veteran reporter at the Sentinel, said, “We challenge powerful people and institutions and give voice to those who otherwise have none. And we have continued to do so even as our corporate management in Chicago has laid off so many of our colleagues and friends, cut our newsgathering resources and careened from one poor strategic decision to another. This cannot continue. All of us here are committed to preserving our community’s access to quality local journalism. Our union will help us do that.”

In a mission statement distributed throughout the newsroom Tuesday morning and presented to local management, employees wrote, “For more than 100 years, Orlando Sentinel journalists have worked to tell the story of Central Florida. As our name reminds all, we keep watch. We hold local leaders accountable, celebrate our region’s triumphs, and reveal its failures.  …“The Orlando Sentinel built an award-winning, nationally recognized team with incomparable institutional knowledge and unrivaled connections to Central Florida — and it has been gutted, with senior journalists and talented young reporters pushed out as our corporate management in Chicago and our largest shareholders have been rewarded. In January alone, the Sentinel lost 130 years of journalism expertise. ...

“This union is our way of defending the future of our newsroom — and Central Florida’s access to quality local journalism.” 

Amanda Rabines, who has been a reporter at GrowthSpotter for a year, said, “GrowthSpotter and other divisions of the Orlando Sentinel like El Sentinel have a target pool of people who rely on our journalism everyday. A union will help preserve our voices in the community and the indispensable coverage of our fields. I believe it is in our best interest to act upon our legally protected rights to respectfully collaborate with corporate managers on the future of our workplace.” 

The union campaign at the Sentinel is the latest part of an upsurge in NewsGuild organizing drives in newsrooms across the country — including recent victories at the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald, Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union, the Hartford Courant, The Chicago Tribune and Maryland’s Capital Gazette. Within the past week, staff at the Palm Beach Post, Palm Beach Daily News, Naples Daily News, The News-Press, The Banner and the Marco Eagle  also announced they are unionizing.

###

The NewsGuild-CWA is the largest union of media professionals in the country, representing more than 20,000 journalists and other news industry employees in the U.S., Canada and
Puerto Rico.