Homes and downtown Anchorage buildings are seen from Westchester Lagoon on May 6, 2020. (Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Anchorage Daily News owner Ryan Binkley declined to recognize a nascent newsroom union on Thursday.
Newsroom staff announced their intention to unionize on Tuesday. They are asking for fair wages, financial transparency and a sustainable workplace environment at the state’s most widely read newspaper.
In a letter, Binkley wrote that management believes “employees should have an opportunity to decide whether they wish to be represented by the Anchorage News Guild in a free and fair secret ballot election conducted by the (National Labor Relations Board).” He did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Unionizing staff said the refusal delays the beginning of contract negotiations by a few weeks because employees must formally vote to unionize. Fifty percent of the eligible staff plus one vote must be in favor.
Guild members foresee no problem achieving that: Sixteen of 20 newsroom staff have publicly supported the move to unionize and signed union authorization cards, a necessary first step to organizing a union.