Journalists at the Washington Post said they would stage a 24-hour strike on Thursday to protest against staff cuts and what they call management’s failure to bargain in good faith in contract talks that have stretched on for 18 months.
The planned one-day walkout would mark the first general work stoppage at the Post since the bitter, 20-week strike of 1975-76, when Katharine Graham was publisher, according to union officials.
The latest labor clash comes a little more than a month after Will Lewis, the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, was named chief executive and publisher of the Post as the venerable newspaper was projecting a year-end loss of $100m. Lewis is due to take charge on 2 January.
The Post is one of many news outlets struggling to devise a sustainable business model in the decades since the internet upended the economics of journalism and digital advertising rates plummeted.
Workers @washingtonpost have been in contract negotiations with our bosses for 18 months.
— Washington Post Guild (@PostGuild) December 5, 2023
But the company is refusing to pay us what we’re worth or bargain in good faith.
So on Dec. 7, we’re walking off the job for 24 hours. pic.twitter.com/GCraL1I0nm
Executives at the Post, which is owned by the billionaire Amazon.com founder, Jeff Bezos, said at the time of the Lewis announcement that they were offering voluntary buyouts across the company in an effort to reduce employee headcount by about 10% and shrink the size of the newsroom to about 940 journalists.
The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents more than 1,000 editorial, advertising and other non-news staff at the Post, said mismanagement by the previous publisher led to nearly 40 layoffs last year – half from the newsroom – and the company was now seeking to cut another 240 jobs through buyouts.