Phoenix New Times faces NLRB complaint over bargaining delays
Phoenix — The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency in charge of prosecuting violations of federal labor law, has charged Phoenix New Times with violating federal labor law by refusing to bargain with its newly unionized employees to establish a fair contract.
"By refusing to bargain with our union, the Phoenix New Times is violating federal labor law and disrespecting our voices in the workplace,” said Josh Kelety, New Times staff writer and chair of the Phoenix bargaining committee. “All we’ve wanted is to have our union recognized and to work with the New Times to build a better paper and a better workplace. But the New Times has refused to meet their legal obligations to work with us in good faith. The best time for the New Times to come to the table and bargain was yesterday, but the next best time is now and we continue to hope they will.”
The complaint, issued this week, alleges that New Times is violating sections 8(a)(1) and (5) of the National Labor Relations Act by refusing to bargain collectively and in good faith with its employees and shows that professional staff at the NLRB have found merit in the complaint from members of the Voice Media Guild.
This is only the latest attempt by Voice Media Group, New Times’s parent company, to block journalists’ efforts to secure fair working conditions. The corporation had previously refused to voluntarily recognize the union and contested the inclusion of the majority of the staff in the union, resulting in multi-day hearings and lengthy delays.
After the company was forced to acknowledge its workers’ legal right to organize via a successful union election, members of the bargaining committee met with representatives from the company to set times for contract bargaining. Only after that initial meeting did Voice Media Group inform employees in Phoenix that it is seeking to overturn the election and would not fulfill its legal obligation to bargain with them in the meantime — a clear violation of federal labor law.
The Voice Media Guild represents non-manager newsroom employees including an editor, all staff writers, the creative director of print, and editorial fellows.
Phoenix New Times was founded in 1970 as a countercultural response to the Kent State Massacre. Voice Media Guild was established 50 years later in an effort to preserve the voice of independent and alternative media in the Phoenix area.
