BALTIMORE, Aug. 14, 2024 — Members of the Baltimore Sun Guild rallied in downtown Baltimore today for a fair contract and an end to the substandard, non-Guild work that is regularly filling our newspaper’s pages.
Though the Guild is bargaining in good faith to reach a fair contract and improve our members’ quality of life, management has not offered us the same respect. The company has responded with egregious proposals, including slashing some of the fundamental job protections that make us a union — like seniority protections during a layoff and the requirement of just and sufficient cause for dismissal. These are thinly veiled efforts to radically reshape The Baltimore Sun and take power from its dedicated Guild members.
These union-busting tactics will not succeed. Our members have not had an across-the-board raise in over a decade and we deserve a say in the future of this newspaper. Management must end the games and offer us a serious contract proposal.
It is more important than ever that our journalists have robust job protections: Maryland’s largest newspaper is under threat. Management wants to fill the Sun with content from our new owner’s media company, Sinclair Broadcasting, and its television station in Baltimore, Fox45. These stories often lack nuance, context or opposing views. The pages of The Baltimore Sun should be filled mainly by its unionized journalists, who have decades of combined experience reporting in Maryland, not by a national media company with a worrying history of ideologically motivated programming.
The Guild is pushing back. Today, we delivered a letter to management calling for an end to these stories, which hurt our community and make our jobs harder by damaging trust in the Sun. Baltimore deserves better.
“The company is trying to gut our contract,” said Christine Condon, unit chair. “They have proposed making it easier to fire union members, and removing other key protections at the very core of our contract. They would prefer to leave us defenseless, so that they can change the Sun however they please. To that, we say no way.”
If you are unhappy with the content you have seen in the Sun lately, please help us push back by writing a letter to the editor at talkback@baltimoresun.com. Join our members in calling for a fair contract and high-quality journalism written by Guild reporters.
Contact: baltsunguild@gmail.com
