More than 750 unionized staffers at The Washington Post walked off the job Thursday to protest stalled contract talks at the broadsheet owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the company said.
The workers planned a day-long picket and rally outside the publication’s Washington, DC, downtown office — the biggest labor protest to hit the company in 48 years — and asked readers to abstain from buying the newspaper or reading its website in solidarity, the outlet reported.
Non-unionized editors and managers, meanwhile, scrambled to generate content to publish Thursday.
The walkout follows a stalemate between unionized staffers and management that has left workers without a contract for 18 months.
“This is a declaration by hundreds of Washington Post staffers saying that if the company is to work with us fairly, it has to respect its employees,” Sarah Kaplan, a climate reporter and steward for The Washington Post Guild told the newspaper.
The union is seeking pay increases of 4% for the next three years, while the company’s latest offer was 2.25% next year, with 2% increases in 2025 and 2026, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Despite a year and a half of efforts, Post management has refused to bargain in good faith for a fair contract that keeps up with inflation and our competition,” the union said, per the Journal.
According to publication, bargaining over salaries has slowed down the process with the Guild, which is seeking minimums of $100,100 for reporters, for example, while The Post’s latest offer is $73,000.
Other issues include the size of annual cost-of-living raises.
Management said that it is open to the Guild’s requests, including longer contracts, adding that its current offer provides “significant” changes to minimum salaries and annual increases that are “more generous than typical Guild contracts signed in the last two decades.”
“The Post has made its last, best and final offer to the Guild,” a Post spokesperson said.
In October, the company offered voluntary buyouts in an effort to slash head count by 240.
It said layoffs would follow if the goal is not reached. Editor Sally Buzbee told staffers the reduction is expected to leave the newsroom with 940 journalists, roughly the total it had at the end of 2021.
The guild has called the terms of the buyout offer “stingy.”
Those opting to leave would get base pay ranging from six months to two years, depending on how long they have worked there.
Union officials say the buyout could be more generous as it is being paid out of a flush pension fund.
So far, roughly 120 staffers have taken the buyout ahead of the mid-December deadline.
Thursday’s walkout comes as the company is about to get a new publisher and CEO.
William Lewis, a British-born veteran media executive, will take over Jan. 2.
He most recently worked at the Wall Street Journal.
He was tapped last month to replace Fred Ryan, whose chaotic tenure was punctuated by layoffs.
A sweeping walkout hasn’t occurred at the renowned newspaper since 1975 when printing press workers led a strike while shutting down printing operations.
The paper’s then-publisher Katharine Graham hired replacement workers to run the presses, essentially breaking their union, the report said.
The Washington Post work stoppages mirrors the one-day walkout by more than 1,100 unionized New York Times workers almost a year ago to protest deadlocked contract negotiations.
The two sides struck a deal five months later.