Sarasota daily newspaper staffers seek to join union

SARASOTA — Reporters, photographers and editors at the largest daily newspaper by circulation in the Sarasota-Bradenton market, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, could join a union by the end of September.

Newsroom personnel, according to a release from the union, The NewsGuild-CWA, signed cards stating their desire to unionize during a meeting Wednesday at the Tampa regional office of the National Labor Relations Board. The move will trigger an NLRB-monitored election by Herald-Tribune staffers in the next 20 to 40 days, the release adds. The NewsGuild would represent about 40 people in the newsroom.

“The Herald-Tribune newsroom takes pride in providing a voice for Sarasota and its neighbors,” investigative reporter and three-year staff member Elizabeth Johnson says in the release. “Negotiating a good contract will allow us to preserve and continue the quality journalism we've given our community for more than 90 years.”

The union news comes less than a week after newsroom staff at the Lakeland Ledger, in Polk County, voted 22-3 to form a NewsGuild-affiliated union. If Herald-Tribune employees approve the union vote then it would join the Ledger “as the only unionized newspaper newsrooms in Florida and the first to unionize in the Sunshine State in modern memory,” The NewsGuild release states.

Pittsford, N.Y.- based GateHouse Media, part of New Media Investment Group, owns both the Ledger and the Herald-Tribune. Both papers, says The NewsGuild, have gone through several rounds of employee cuts in recent years. In Sarasota, for example, at least 16 employees have been laid off since GateHouse bought the paper in January 2015. Herald-Tribune reporter Billy Cox, in the statement, says many staffers have gone eight years without a raise.

A mission statement drafted by union supporters says workers “understand the Herald-Tribune is a business and want to do our part to make sure it remains successful, respectable and sustainable,” according to The NewsGuild release.

The Herald-Tribune has a daily circulation of 73,700 and a Sunday circulation of 94,800, states The NewsGuild. The paper won a 2016 Pulitzer for investigative reporting, in conjunction with the Tampa Bay Times, for a series on Florida's mental hospitals. It previously won the Pulitzer in 2011, and was a finalist in 2008 and 2010.