Since 2007, ProPublica has become an essential voice in American journalism. Our staff has spurred reform after reform with deeply reported stories that root out wrongdoing and spotlight injustice. We, the employees of ProPublica, have built our newsroom to be a leader in investigative, data, research, audience, visual and engagement reporting and, thanks to the generosity of our donors, shown that a nonprofit business model can be successful. We are proud of our work’s pursuit of justice and transparency and seek to hold our own newsroom to the same standards. That is why we are forming a union.  

Our union is essential to preserving the best parts of working at ProPublica and ensuring our values do not waver regardless of leadership changes or turbulence within the industry. We want to maintain the organization’s focus on ambitious, impact-focused journalism. We want to strengthen existing internal efforts, like those of the diversity committee, that address inequities within our own staff and across our industry.

Our union will give us a seat at the table alongside management to make ProPublica a fairer and more secure place for all of us. We want a ProPublica where employees feel safe to speak up about journalistic standards or workplace problems without fear of repercussions. We want pay transparency and a raise pool that stays ahead of inflation. We want clearly defined work processes and investments in editors, as well as business, specialty and production staffs that keep pace with the organization’s ever-increasing size, in order to avoid production crunches that force employees to work unpredictable schedules without paid overtime. We want clear and consistent work and story expectations. We want a ProPublica that supports internal career development of an increasingly young and diverse staff. And we want staff to feel secure in their employment, and to ensure they have due process should that job security ever come into question.

ProPublica is currently one of the only national publications of its size and prominence not to have union representation for its workers. By forming our union, we will join our peers at The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times and many others across the country. We are asking management to voluntarily recognize our union so that together we can make ProPublica the workplace that we all know it can be.