Editorial employees at the News Journal and Dover (Post) operations approved their first two-year contract by an overwhelming margin.
According to a News Guild of Greater Philadelphia release, the vote was 14-3 (News Journal) with a 3-0 vote for weeklies. (Dover Post)
A group of employees organized the Delaware News Guild in an effort to form a union during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The vote comes after the merger of Gannett and Gatehouse a few years ago. Gatehouse operated the former Dover Post weeklies around the state. In all, Gannett operates about 100 dailies and about 1,000 weeklies.
Both the News Journal and Dover Post were traditionally non-union papers, even though many Philadelphia-area newsrooms are unionized.
The News Journal for decades had a veteran news staff that did not have a great deal of enthusiasm for union organizing efforts, due in part to benefits that included a competitive pension plan.
However, a long-running wave of cutbacks, reorganizations, and downsizings led to younger and far smaller news staff that were not as happy with the status quo. Weeklies have moved to skeleton staffs in cost-cutting efforts with sometimes minimal government coverage of fast-growing areas like Middletown.
Turnover has been high with reporters, as they gain experience, moving on to other jobs, often outside media.
Gannett uses a combined editorial staff in Delaware and neighboring Salisbury, MD in its regional reporting efforts.
By contrast, unions have struggled in other industries. Poultry processor Mountaire employees voted out the United Food and Commercial Workers and Teamsters unions at its Delaware operations. The poultry processing industry, which employs a large number of recent immigrants, is largely nonunion.
