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Melissa Harris-Perry: Hi, everyone. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and this is The Takeaway. Florida has been at the center of some of the biggest news stories of recent years. From the state's closely watched position in national elections to the so-called Don't Say Gay Bill just passed by state Republicans. Journalists at the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald have been covering all of these stories and many more, but after voting to form a union at the end of 2019, they've also been in a lengthy process of contract negotiations with their parent company, McClatchy.

Mary Ellen Klas: We'd give them proposals. They'd take months before they'd respond. We'd ask for meetings. We asked to meet every week. They would give us a next meeting date four to six weeks out. This went on for over two years.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That's Mary Ellen Klas, Capitol Bureau Chief for the Miami Herald.

Mary Ellen Klas: I have been with the Herald 18 years. During this time, we have watched as our newsroom has decreased exponentially. This is a function of the fact that the for-profit legacy newspaper industry has just faced serious challenges, and has retracted quite a bit. It accelerated, of course, during the great recession.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Mary Ellen is also co-chair of the One Herald Guild, the union formed by Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald workers. She told us about some of the benefits that have been at the heart of contract negotiations.

Mary Ellen Klas: We have had a lot of luck identifying and demanding many of the quality of life changes that McClatchy had failed to recognize and honor, and so we have been able to get our parent company to acknowledge the fact that they do need to do things like provide parental leave, and give us work from home pay during COVID. While the company acknowledged and agreed to those things, they continue to withhold those particular benefits to our union, because we were in the midst of bargaining and to the other unions in the chain. The chain has 30 papers and 17 of which are now run by our union.

Melissa Harris-Perry: One NewsGuild has identified stack pay disparities between English and Spanish language journalists.

Mary Ellen Klas: One of the primary reasons we decided to walk out is that we did a salary survey, and with the information that we were granted because of our union status, we got a window into the inequities in our newsroom. It was something that was really eye-opening for us. We discovered that the kind of inequitable pay rates they had just within our newsroom were tremendously unfair with veteran reporters of our Spanish-speaking sister newspaper El Nuevo Herald. Veteran reporters were making less than the starting salary that the paper wanted to offer to everybody in the chain.

Someone who was working for 15 years wasn't even making what the paper was offering a new hire with no experience. We said until we see these inequities change, we're not going to quit at the bargaining table.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In addition to the disparities, these reporters are concerned that even top salaries for veteran employees are quite insufficient for the cost of living in Miami.

Mary Ellen Klas: We've got a 15-year veteran of El Nuevo Herald earning $49,000 a year. We've got a 10-year employee of the Miami Herald earning $80,000 a year. This is in a community that is considered one of the highest cost of living communities in the nation. Does it have an impact on our ability to attract people? We don't think that people should come to work at the Miami Herald so that they can subsidize their employer just because they want to work at a good newspaper.

Melissa Harris-Perry: These negotiations have gone on for more than two years. Last week the Guild took a new course of action.

Mary Ellen Klas: We just decided it was time to put an end to all these delays. We felt that while they were acknowledging our demands and concerns, the ownership of the paper and the hierarchy was just not listening to us, and we didn't think they were taking us seriously enough. We decided it was time to organize a walkout, and because [chuckles] most of us are still working from home, we really didn't walk out of the building, because there isn't a single building to walk out of, but we all stopped work for one day. It was very successful. We had more than three-fourths of the members of our union withhold their work for 24 hours.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Mary Ellen says that even though the walkout was technically virtual, it still had a tangible effect on Fridays Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald.

Mary Ellen Klas: Editors were scrambling. There were a couple of editors who had to actually write stories. When it comes to political news, we have a joint bureau with the Tampa Bay Times in our Tallahassee bureau, and so the paper reached out to the Tampa Bay Times asking them for copy. We ran a lot of wire service copy that day. We featured some things as news alerts like crispy cream, given away donuts, things that were not exactly news alerts in a normal day. Many of our sources were watching and aware of what was going on.

We did a GoFundMe effort to try and raise money because if the paper withholds our salary and wages for the day, there are some people who just cannot afford to live a day without wages.

Melissa Harris-Perry: She told us that the walkout seemed to have some immediate effects.

Mary Ellen Klas: At the bargaining table we had some modest agreements and made some modest progress. The good thing is that after we walked out the company agreed to meet us at the bargaining table in a week. We have never had them not wait longer than that before, so this is a good sign. We think maybe we're going to make some progress. We're hopeful and optimistic.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You may be wondering why folks like Mary Ellen have stuck around for two years of contract negotiations despite all of their frustration with management.

Mary Ellen Klas: One of the things that keeps me motivated and really willing to work with this group of reporters, many of them are young new reporters, many are in the middle of their careers, and there's a bunch of us like me that are old timers. One of the things that motivates me so much is that people are willing to do this job because we love and we're passionate about delivering news. The other thing that's really unique is that we're really committed to providing the kinds of news that helps people understand their community, which is local journalism at its best.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Going forward, Mary Ellen told us that the One NewsGuild members are eager to put the contract negotiations behind them and focus on their work.

Mary Ellen Klas: What happens in Florida is often a template for what will happen nationally, and our role as journalists is to elucidate and amplify the debate on many of these politically charged, oftentimes, culture war issues. The best thing that could happen is we can get back to that work, and put all our energy into that instead of having to fight for a fair contract.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Our thanks to Mary Ellen Klas for speaking with us. We did reach out to McClatchy for comment on the story, we've not yet heard back. If they respond, we'll post it to thetakeaway.org.

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