News staff at The Columbus Dispatch and The Newark Advocate plan to unionize as the Dispatch News Guild.
Reporters, photo journalists, videographers and digital producers announced the effort Wednesday morning.
The Dispatch and The Advocate operate out of a single newsroom and share content between the papers. Both are owned by USA TODAY Co., previously known as Gannett.
The Dispatch has undergone serious staff cuts in the six years following a merger between GateHouse Media and Gannett. Today, the paper has fewer than 40 journalists in its newsroom, down from more than 90 in 2019.
The smaller Newark Advocate, which covers Licking County, has seen ever deeper cuts.
"As we’ve hemorrhaged talent from our newsroom over the last few years, we’ve felt little reassurance or urgency from the USA TODAY Co. to recoup our losses," reads a Dispatch News Guild mission statement.
"If I had to put it in words, we're just fed up," said Dispatch breaking news reporter Shahid Meighan. "We love what we do. We love covering central Ohio and bringing the news to the people here. And it's hard to do that with the buyouts, layoffs, furloughs, stagnant wages."
Meighan said more than 80% of the Dispatch's news staff is involved in the unionization effort. Thirty-four people signed the guild's mission statement.
They're asking the community to sign a petition of support encouraging USA Today Co. to voluntarily recognize the union.
In a statement sent to WOSU, USA TODAY Co. said they respect the right of employees at The Columbus Dispatch and The Newark Advocate to make "a fully informed choice" to unionize.
"USA TODAY Co. strongly supports the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) election process and has always participated in that process fairly and in good faith. Central to that process is a democratic election in which every employee’s voice is heard," the statement reads.
The Dispatch staff will likely take a formal vote on unionization in January, Meighan said.
Meighan said it seemed to him that management at first found the staff's union announcement "humorous."
"Then they kind of realized the gravity of it," Meighan said. "We acknowledge that our direct management here is doing everything that they can to to make things better for us, but their hands are tied."
Meighan said staff does not want to be adversaries for their direct management and are approaching the unionization effort with a "spirit of cooperation and respect."
The Dispatch has provided local news to readers in Columbus and central Ohio for more than 150 years.
The Dispatch News Guild's mission statement says the staff wants the Dispatch to "not only survive, but thrive."
Dispatch staff report that they have the support of sister papers at The Akron Beacon Journal, The Canton Repository, The Record-Courier and The Massillon Independent, which are all represented by The NewsGuild-CWA Local 1.
Across the USA TODAY Co. network, nearly 50 newspapers are unionized, according to the Dispatch. The Columbus Dispatch is one of the largest newspapers in the network that has not yet unionized.
