Today millions of people will crane their necks to watch the total solar eclipse — a phenomenon that will not occur again in the U.S. until 2044. But journalists at two Gannett newsrooms will not be there to cover the event.
Unionized workers at the Austin American-Statesman and the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle are on strike over stalled contract negotiations. While the Texan journalists will end their work stoppage Tuesday morning, the New York reporters plan to keep going until they secure a new contract.
Both Austin and Rochester are in the path of totality, and journalists at the two newsrooms say their outlets have devoted considerable resources to covering the eclipse. Democrat and Chronicle education reporter Justin Murphy said his newsroom has already published dozens of stories about the eclipse and has a “major” print issue planned for the event.
“We see the eclipse as the exact sort of news event that demands experienced local reporters who know where to be, who know who to speak with, who know what to ask,” Murphy said. “We’ve put a huge amount of thought into where … all the different reporters are going to be set up to capture not only the eclipse itself, but all the different geographies and demographics of our community — the different experiences that people are going to be having.”
But after the Newspaper Guild of Rochester failed to reach an agreement on a contract with Gannett Friday night, workers decided to launch an open-ended strike. Their last contract expired in 2019, and they have spent the past two years bargaining intensely, said Murphy, who is vice chair of the union.
The Austin NewsGuild, meanwhile, has been negotiating its first contract for three years. Gannett tried to accelerate negotiations by telling the union that if they did not reach an agreement by Thursday, everything they had bargained for in the past two weeks would be voided, health reporter Nicole Villalpando said.
The union decided to strike after Gannett presented a “laughable” wage package, said Villalpando, who serves as the union’s chair. The company proposed a $50,000 salary floor and a one-time raise of 50 cents an hour for workers above the minimum starting wage. The union had been fighting for a $57,000 salary floor, as well as additional wage tiers that would incentivize senior reporters to stay. The newsroom has lost a quarter of its staff in the past three years, in part because of wages.
“We really want to keep our senior members because they have been loyal, they know Austin, the public benefits from the institutional knowledge and they are more likely to stay,” Villalpando said. “We’ve had a lot of great new reporters, but they stay a year, a year-and-a-half, and they move on. We want to make sure there’s an incentive to stay at the Statesman.”
In addition to higher wages, both the Rochester and Austin unions are seeking protections against layoffs and the use of artificial intelligence to replace journalists’ jobs. The Austin NewsGuild is also trying to preserve its three-person newsroom copy desk, which Gannett has sought to eliminate in favor of a regional desk.
Union leaders at both newsrooms said they are frustrated because Gannett has granted some of the protections they’re seeking to other unions but refused to give the same to them. Journalists at The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, California, for example, recently won protections against AI after going on their own open-ended strike.
Gannett vice president of labor relations Amy Garrard wrote in an emailed statement that the company plans to continue bargaining in good faith and that the strikes will not disrupt its news operations.
“Our goal is to preserve journalism and serve our community as we continue to bargain in good faith,” Garrard wrote. “Readers can be assured there will be no disruption to our ability to deliver content and trusted news.”
Murphy said that ahead of the Rochester union’s strike, Gannett was already reaching out to freelancers and journalists at its other Northeast papers to make contingency plans. In a FAQ document sent to Austin journalists Friday, Gannett noted that news coverage would be handled using a “combination of supervisors, existing personnel, and employing contracted professionals.” The company also posted several temporary, Austin-based reporter positions on its jobs page.
Both the Austin and Rochester unions have held one-day work stoppages in the past, but the current strikes are the biggest labor disputes at the papers in recent history. Though the Austin reporters will return to work on Tuesday, the union has not ruled out the possibility of an open-ended strike in the future if contract negotiations do not progress.
The Rochester union, meanwhile, is on an indefinite strike — one of the most extreme measures a union can take. Though media unions have organized dozens of one-day work stoppages in the past three years, only seven have held open-ended strikes.
“This to us is really a dramatization of the stakes that we’re talking about,” Murphy said. “Rochester needs us. They need us on eclipse day, but more importantly, they need us going forward. And so this feels like the time to put our foot down and say, ‘It’s time to get this (contract) done.’”
