To the ProPublica Board: We Need a Fair Contract Now
Last week, we reached out to ProPublica’s board of directors to raise serious concerns about ProPublica’s harmful disciplinary process as well as our collective interest in getting a fair contract now.
We took the step of contacting the board — which oversees our organization — after failing to get ProPublica’s management to substantively address these issues, despite years of trying.
We told board members that we are worried about the way management’s stances are hurting ProPublica. And we asked them to use their roles as stewards of our beloved organization to direct management to stop stalling on key issues at the bargaining table.
We emphasized that we want a just and equitable workplace so we can better do what we care about most: producing the in-depth investigative journalism that is critical to our democracy.
You can read the full letter we sent to ProPublica’s board below:
Dear members of the ProPublica board:
We are writing to you with an urgent warning: ProPublica’s management is damaging the trust that our readers and donors have in our newsroom by refusing to respond in a meaningful way to our demands for transparency, fairness and equity within the workplace. We, the staff who produce the work that has earned ProPublica a place at the forefront of journalism, have raised concerns for more than two years, but management has largely ignored us. We are now calling on you, as stewards of our beloved institution, to direct senior leadership to change course and avoid further damage to the company’s reputation by agreeing to our reasonable proposals.
In June 2023, we announced that we were unionizing with support from 97% of eligible workers across ProPublica’s staff. Job security was, and still is, among our membership’s most urgent motivations. We share industry-wide concerns regarding mass layoffs and ham-fisted implementation of technology, including artificial intelligence, that have displaced workers.
Many of our unit members have also experienced a culture of fear at ProPublica. Management’s reliance on vague “performance improvement plans” and inconsistent treatment of our colleagues continues to have a corrosive effect on our workplace. We have lost beloved and gifted coworkers to this unreasonable disciplinary process, and we have heard from several highly qualified and respected journalists at other outlets that they have decided against applying here until job security protections are in place. We worry what that means for attracting and retaining talent.
At the bargaining table, management has revealed a staggering unwillingness to acknowledge these key issues or compromise on proposals to address them. They have:
Rejected basic job security provisions such as Just Cause — which exists at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times — as well as transparent and consistent disciplinary processes and layoff protections.
Refused to enshrine in a contract promises they made to their staff, donors and readers, such as a commitment to diversity in hiring and a pledge to use our reserve fund to prevent layoffs in the event of a fundraising downturn.
Insisted on being able to use artificial intelligence however they want, even to potentially generate stories and replace journalists, in direct contradiction to what our industry considers ethical.
To quote ProPublica’s unofficial catchphrase, “we’re not shutting up” until we achieve a fair contract that guarantees the basic job protections we sought when we formed our union more than two years ago. We’ve tried to make our demands for fair treatment clear during closed-door negotiations, in all-staff meetings, and through internal letters and email campaigns. When those methods yielded nothing but platitudes and insulting contract proposals, we began to speak out publicly. More than 1,300 people — including ProPublica donors and readers, as well as journalists in other newsrooms — signed onto a petition calling on the company to agree to a fair contract.
While we appreciate management’s recent shift to more productively bargaining over issues like time off and other benefits, those improvements will count for little if we are unable to secure basic job protections like Just Cause that would give us the confidence to use such benefits without fear of it being held against us.
We know that, as board members, you will be involved in many discussions this week regarding our organization’s long-term success. We urge you to use that opportunity to direct management to agree to the common sense proposals we have offered that will protect our members’ jobs as well as stem any damage to ProPublica’s reputation with its readers, donors and the communities that depend upon our journalism. Doing so quickly will save time and money and allow us to focus our energies on what brought us to ProPublica: producing hard-hitting journalism that confronts power and addresses the threats facing our democracy.
We are happy to meet to discuss our concerns at any time.
Sincerely,
The ProPublica Guild Unit Council