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CHICAGO (CN) — Unionized journalists at the Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Publishing outlets called a 24-hour strike on Thursday morning — walking off the job until 5 a.m. on Friday — in response to stated failures by Tribune Publishing’s owner, hedge fund Alden Global Capital, to meet workers’ demands for fair pay, staff retention and 401K matching, among other issues.
“We sent a message, and we’re prepared to go back and send another message if we have to,” veteran Chicago Tribune reporter Ray Long said in a phone interview. “Five years without raises is ridiculous.”
The Chicago Tribune Guild reported that over 97% of its membership voted in favor of the strike, the first such labor action the paper’s journalists have taken in its 177-year history. The Guild formed in 2018, and sibling unions at other Tribune Publishing outlets formed in 2019 and 2020. The union members have worked without contracts in the years since.
“Amid historic inflation, we’ve called on the company to offer fair wages and fix systemic pay gaps between male and female journalists and white journalists and journalists of color,” the union journalists wrote in their official strike pledge. “We’ve asked the employer to maintain its 401K contribution so employees can retire with dignity. Over and over, the company has refused to meet these basic needs.”
Journalists working for other Tribune Publishing outlets such as the Orlando Sentinel and Virginian-Pilot also joined the 24-hour strike. As part of the one-day labor action, they asked the public not to cross the “click-it line” by avoiding Tribune stories online and not interacting with Tribune social media pages.
On their own social media accounts, Tribune journalists sounded off about their feelings regarding the strike, their jobs and Alden Global Capital.
Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory Pratt offered a “historic one day FOIA amnesty to all government bodies in Illinois that honor today’s picket line,” while fellow reporter Stacy St. Clair posted photos of cakes featuring images of Alden president Heath Freeman and founder Randall Smith. The cake featuring Smith states in all-caps lettering “LET THEM EAT CAKE!” while the cake emblazoned with Freeman’s image accused him of putting ketchup on hot dogs — the ultimate Chicago sin.
At a rally outside the Chicago Tribune Freedom Center on Thursday morning, the striking journalists — including Long — had even harsher words for Alden Global.
“We want to make this very clear: We don’t bow to punks like you,” Long said. “Every day of the week journalists like us run over punks like you.”
Last year Bally’s Corporation agreed to pay Tribune Publishing $150 million to vacate the Chicago Tribune’s printing plant in the Freedom Center by July of this year. Bally’s plans to build a casino on the site — the culmination of one of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s signature goals while in office — with the Tribune’s printing operations slated to move out of the city.
In 2019, news industry analyst Ken Doctor accused Alden of being the “personification of the new vulture capitalism,” an epithet that has since stuck. The cynical goal of vulture capitalists like Alden, Doctor said, was to purchase news outlets in a seemingly irreversible decline in order to “make a lot of money on the way down.”
Critics like the Tribune Guild journalists claim they achieve this by slashing newsroom budgets and staffing levels, leaving papers hollowed-out shells of their former selves. In an open letter the Guild addressed to Alden prior to Thursday’s strike, it accused the hedge fund of being a “vampire.”
“In your time owning Tribune newspapers across the country, you have shrunk our staff by dozens, cut freelancer budgets and limited access to critical information,” the Guild stated in its letter. “You are trying to take away our 401K match. You attacked our health care. You don’t prioritize equity.”
The Guild’s reporters and their sympathizers echoed the accusation on social media.
“The combined staff of the mighty Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press newspapers is now just 38. We had more than 250 staffers at The Pilot alone when I started there in 2011,” wrote Mike Hixenbaugh, now a senior reporter at NBC.
Long also advised Alden to change how it views extracting profit from the Chicago Tribune, if only for its own sake. He doubted a single day of work stoppage would change Alden’s perspective, but added that the Guild’s reporters had found support in the broader labor movement. Support for that movement, per a 2022 Gallup poll, is currently at its strongest ebb in America in nearly 60 years.
“We are there to show them that they should pay fair wages for hard work,” Long said. “And if they don’t, they will feel our wrath.”
Officials at Alden itself could not be reached for comment on the strikes.
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