On Saturday, the newspaper publisher McClatchy tweeted a happy early Mother’s Day to all the moms in the company. “We are proud to support you with our new paid parental leave,” the tweet read. “While still in the process of reaching agreements with some of our guilds, we look forward to the opportunity for all of our new parents to enjoy this great new benefit!” On Sunday, one such guild—representing staffers at the Miami Herald and its sister title, El Nuevo Herald—pushed back: McClatchy, the guild said, not only denied paid leave to a new mom in its newsroom, but also rejected colleagues’ offer to donate her nearly fifteen hundred hours of their own accumulated sick leave and paid time off. “The reason?” the guild wrote. “McClatchy said it sees our colleague as a bargaining chip in contract negotiations—an attempt to divide and pressure us into accepting the company’s harmful proposals as we negotiate our first contract.” Herald staffers tweeted separately that a McClatchy lawyer had outlined that reasoning on a call. “Not inferred,” David Neal, a reporter, stressed. “Actually said.” Unions and journalists from other publications posted messages of solidarity with the Herald guild, which continued yesterday to put its point across. Tony Hunter, McClatchy’s chairman and CEO, and Kristin Roberts, its senior vice president of news, joined a video call with various Herald staffers who had won a company award for their reporting; some of the staffers held up signs with... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2021-05-11 12:32:25 UTC ]