Staff at the New York Daily News shut down their jobs Thursday for the first time in 30 years to protest what they called “chronic cuts” by hedge fund owners who “shrink budgets to line their own pockets.” I quit.
About 40 members of the Daily News union walked a picket line in the rain around an office building in midtown Manhattan, union leaders said. The Daily News operates a co-working space in the office building that can accommodate only six people.
The News, which bills itself as “New York's hometown newspaper,” has been homeless since giving up its lower Manhattan headquarters at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
The 104-year-old tabloid was acquired by Alden Global, the notorious predatory hedge fund that owns more than 200 newspapers, as part of the $633 million acquisition of Tribune Publishing in May 2021. Scooped by Capital.
At Alden's behest, Daily News employees “quit in droves,” but a new policy requires basic staff to get pre-approved overtime pay.
“Alden wants to act as if we were not carved,” union trustee and Daily News reporter Michael Gartland said in the union notice.
“We have no intention of engaging in such acts of intellectual dishonesty. In fact, we are strapped for cash, which means fewer staff and less ability to cover the city.” “We believe this is bad for New York,” he added.
To make matters worse, I haven't had a raise in six years.
In fact, salaries were cut by up to 15% during COVID-19, in part due to reduced expenses as employees no longer had to come to work, but salaries were not restored even after the pandemic ended. Ta.
The paper's circulation has fallen to less than 60,000, with 54 union members and a small number of editors.
The website contained a small selection of recent articles written during the day by several non-union members, who also scrambled to publish the printed version.
Daily News reporters participating in the strike called out to passersby: campaign to sign the letter “It's time to stop wasting resources and fighting workers over overtime,” he told Daily News Editor-in-Chief Andrew Julian.
The Post has reached out to Alden Capital and Julian for comment.
The editorial staff voted in 2021 to form a union that is part of the New York News Guild, but Alden has not yet negotiated an initial contract.
A Daily News reporter confirmed to the Post that more than 94% of the union, or about 50 workers, are participating in the strike.
“Hedge funds changed their overtime rules without negotiation and are now refusing to pay unless they comply with the new rules,” the union's letter announcing the strike said.
“News is breaking 24 hours a day. Hedge fund owners not only don't understand it, they don't care.”
Following a strategy similar to that of other publications, Alden outsourced the Daily News' printing operations and sold a state-of-the-art press at its former factory in Bayonne, New Jersey.
The newspaper, which had a circulation of 2.4 million at its peak, was last shut down during a 147-day strike that ended in 1991.
