After 37 years of syndicated solidarity, cartoonists draw service to a close

March 3, 2020 by

Since 1983, Gary Huck and Mike Konopacki have been supplying labor publications from coast to coast, including The Union Advocate, with cartoons drawn specifically for union members. But faced with dwindling subscription rates, the cartoonists are folding their syndication service, effective this month.

Huck and Konopacki won’t stop drawing. Fans will be able to view new work online at huckkonopackicartoons.com. Still, losing the cartoon syndicate is a sobering sign of the times for both the labor movement and print media.

Huck and Konopacki share Wisconsin roots. In the late 70s, Huck was working as the cartoonist for a labor weekly in Racine. Konopacki, fresh out of the University of Wisconsin, was drawing for a syndication service based on the East Coast, as well as a publication put out by striking newspaper workers in Madison.

Certain he wanted to make a career of cartooning but uncertain how to go about it, Konopacki drafted letters seeking advice from editorial cartoonists at several major newspapers. He got one response, from Tom Curtis of the Milwaukee Sentinel.

“He was a very conservative Nixonite,” Konopacki laughed. “But he was a very sweet guy. Maybe talking to a lefty cartoonist doing anti-war cartoons for the student newspaper was his Christian charity or something, but he became kind of a mentor.”

Huck, it turned out, had befriended Curtis, too, and in 1979 he introduced the two rabble rousers at a cartoonists’ convention in Phoenix.

“I remember it was about 300 degrees, and we were walking to the final dinner,” Huck said. “Mike didn’t have a sport coat on, and Tom Curtis got very upset, so Mike had to go back to his room to get one.”

Four years later, the two hatched a plan to syndicate their work together, launching Huck-Konopacki Cartoons with about 30 subscribers from the labor press.

Subscriptions grew steadily, peaking at about 120 publications, until the early 2000s. By then, Konopacki said, “not only was print dying out, but you had unions themselves merging or just dying out.”

Before closing this year, the syndication service counted five subscribing publications, including two from Minnesota. Of course, much has changed since 1983, when union members made up more than 20% of the U.S. workforce and newspapers employed hundreds of editorial cartoonists. Today, union members make up about 10% of the workforce, and about 25 editorial cartoonists remain at daily publications.

“It was a double whammy,” Konopacki said.

In some respects, it’s impressive the two cartoonists made a go of it as long as they did. Their cartoons are prickly and often political. Their wit comes with a healthy dose of righteous anger. And they haven’t shied away from making organized labor, its leaders or its friends in public office the target of their work.

“There’s a risk to using political cartoons in your union’s publication,” Huck said. “There’s a risk of blowback, and a lot of people in the labor movement prefer not to be confronted. Mike and I would hear it a lot: ‘We don’t need criticism from within, we get enough criticism from without.’”

Attacks from without have labor on the ropes now, but renewed interest in unions, particularly among younger Americans, offers hope for a revival of the movement’s fortunes. Will a vibrant labor press, whether in print or online, be reborn too?

“We’re certainly capable of doing the job,” Huck said. “There’s just no place for the job to be done. But I don’t doubt for a second that art will be part of whatever the labor movement becomes.”

Humor will, too, Konopacki added.

“You have to make fun of bosses,” he said. “They hate it, and it’s legally protected by the First Amendment. You have to use humor to try to take away some of their power.

“You can’t build a movement being grim all the time.”

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Newspaper workers demand hedge-fund owners invest or sell

May 16, 2018 by

Journalists from the Pioneer Press and other newspapers in the Digital First chain rallied together last week in New York, demanding their bosses at Alden Global Capital invest in journalism – or sell to new owners who will.

“We’ve been pushed around for too long by this hedge fund, and we’re getting tired of it,” Pioneer Press reporter Nick Ferraro said after attending the rally. “We can’t just sit back and let them write history by ruining community newspapers. We have to write a little bit of history ourselves.”

The protest channeled growing outrage among employees at Alden-owned publications across the country, sparked by reporting from Harvard University’s Nieman Lab showing Digital First had the industry’s highest profit margin last year.

The report broke down revenues and expenses at several Alden-owned publications, revealing that Pioneer Press workers delivered a tidy $10 million profit for the hedge fund in 2017. The newspaper’s profit margin is 13 percent, a number considered healthy – if not robust – for the industry.

The numbers stunned Ferraro and other members of the Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild, who have watched the Pioneer Press newsroom shrink from over 100 journalists to less than 50 since Alden seized its majority stake in Digital First eight years ago.

Ferraro called the report “shocking.” Capitol reporter Dave Orrick, a spokesperson for the Pioneer Press Guild unit, said the numbers show Alden is more interested in wringing short-term profits out of Digital First newspapers than in making them viable for the long haul.

“It’s a highly profitable company reducing staff at the expense of the core product,” Orrick said. “That is paradox in most business models. It is an eventual disaster in the case of a community newspaper.”

Turning up the heat

To avoid that disaster, newspaper workers are fighting on multiple fronts, including the court of public opinion.

Outside Alden’s offices last week, they carried signs demanding the hedge fund “invest or sell” and “get out of our news.” Although Alden refused to meet with the workers or receive their petition with 11,000-plus signatures, the action drew coverage from several prominent media outlets.

Alden’s top executives “were probably in their mansions somewhere or vacationing on a tropical island” during the protest, Ferraro said. “But they knew we were there. We’ve just got to keep this campaign going.”

Stronger together

Bending a global hedge fund to their will won’t be easy, but Digital First workers are finding strength in numbers – even as those numbers dwindle. Despite being spread out in newsrooms across the country, journalists are taking Alden to task with a consistent message and united voice.

That’s the power of a union, Orrick said.

Workers at 12 Alden-owned newspapers share an international union, the NewsGuild-CWA. The union creates “infrastructure,” Orrick explained, for workers across the newspaper chain to come together, strategize and amplify each other’s voice.

“We don’t have to go searching around LinkedIn for who we know, who might be a friendly face to try to create a network,” Orrick said. “That national network already exists.”

Guild members leveraged their collective strength in bargaining two years ago, forming a united front in contract talks with Digital First and winning raises for the first time in years.

They’ve also hired an investigative reporter of their own to dig into the hedge fund and Digital First’s business practices. The findings, published on dfmworkers.org and in national publications, have helped poke holes in the narrative that the Internet is killing newspapers (it’s actually Wall Street), and served as fodder for supporters relentlessly targeting Alden on social media with the hashtag #NewsMatters.

Search goes on

Still, Orrick acknowledged the Guild’s successes have been “measured” to this point. The pursuit of new ownership – locally and across the Digital First chain – continues.

“The fact is we’re trying to sell something we don’t own to some sort of entity or parties that we don’t have any standing to bargain with,” Orrick said. “So it’s a bizarre situation in that sense.”

Ferarro believes the Pioneer Press’ best hope is a new owner with local ties and, perhaps, a sense of civic responsibility, pointing to Mankato billionaire Glen Taylor’s acquisition of the Star Tribune four years ago.

“I would think a lot of business people would be happy with a $10 million annual profit,” Ferarro said. “We are still, I think, doing really well with our coverage of a lot of communities, we are still the No. 1 choice in the east metro, and we have a really loyal base of readers.

“Let’s hope someone likes the numbers, likes the good journalism we’re doing in the east metro and we can move on from this disaster.”

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Pioneer Press workers join nationwide contract campaign, win first raise in seven years

August 16, 2016 by

newsmattersAfter banding together with workers at 11 other newspapers owned by the same hedge fund, union members at the St. Paul Pioneer Press won their first wage increase in seven years, part of a new three-year contract they voted to ratify Aug. 9.

Members of the Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild will receive 3-percent raises Jan. 1, 2017, according to terms of the new agreement, which also calls for “wage reopeners” – negotiations that could lead to additional raises – in the contract’s second and third years.

As they did this summer, Pioneer Press workers will participate in any additional bargaining jointly with other members of Guild locals employed by Digital First Media, a newspaper group owned by Alden Global Capital.

In an innovative and historic contract campaign, Pioneer Press workers joined forces with fellow Guild members at publications across the country, including The Denver Post, The Mercury News, The Trentonian and eight others.

Together, they launched the “#NewsMatters” campaign more than seven moths ago, using social media, member mobilization and an online petition drive to put the heat on management. More than 11,000 people nationwide joined in calling on Digital First to support quality journalism by negotiating fairly with the workers who make it possible.

Last month, the campaign delivered results at the bargaining table, as Digital First workers leveraged their collective weight to win across-the-board raises at all 12 newspapers, including some that hadn’t seen increases in 10 years.

But the company refused to budge when it came to one major concession: job security for workers in circulation and page production.

According to the Guild, the Pioneer Press is likely to outsource field circulation to local contractors, which would affect about 36 workers, mostly part-time. And up to eight local page-production workers could see their jobs outsourced before the new contract expires, as Digital First looks to centralize production at a common location for all of its publications.

In a statement on the Minnesota Guild’s website, the Pioneer Press bargaining team said it secured a “letter of agreement regarding enhanced severance packages and limits on the number of positions that may be outsourced” in production, and enhanced severance for any outsourced circulation employees.

The new contract also rolls back the Pioneer Press’ ability to furlough Guild members, capping the number of unpaid days management can impose at three in 2018 and eliminating unpaid days altogether in 2019.

The Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild, TNG-CWA Local 37002, currently represents 167 Pioneer Press employees.

A grant from the Communications Workers of America, the Newspaper Guild’s parent union, helped make the joint bargaining framework possible, covering travel and other costs.

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Archdiocese strips Catholic Spirit workers of their union contract

June 14, 2012 by

The Catholic Spirit is the award-winning official publication of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is moving forward with plans to dissolve the bargaining unit of workers at its official newspaper, The Catholic Spirit, when their current collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of this month.

In an overhaul intended “to create a more integrated communications function,” the Archdiocesan Office of Communications will absorb The Catholic Spirit and some of its 13 workers, but not their union contract.

In meetings with lawyers for the archdiocese last month, Catholic Spirit workers, represented by the Minnesota Newspaper Guild, requested the archdiocese voluntarily continue to recognize their bargaining unit within the expanded communications office. The archdiocese denied that request, prompting Guild members to send a letter to Archbishop John Nienstedt seeking clarification.

“The only reason we were given for the unit disappearing so far is that the Guild unit does not fit within the central corporation’s needs,” said Chris Pierskalla, chair of the Guild’s Catholic Spirit bargaining unit. “That hasn’t been expounded upon.”

The Guild is asking supporters to contact Archbishop Nienstedt and ask him to respect The Catholic Spirit workers’ request to keep their union. To reach the archbishop, call (651) 291-4511, or fill out the e-mail form on the archbishop’s website.

The Guild has represented workers at The Catholic Spirit since 1965. Prior to the communications overhaul, the bi-weekly newspaper, with a circulation of 82,000, operated “not independently, but with autonomy” from the archdiocese, Pierskalla said. The archbishop served as publisher, but the newspaper “operates basically at the direction of the associate publisher and his staff.”

The arrangement has fostered award-winning results. The Catholic Spirit and its staff members have collected several awards from the Catholic Press Association, including first place in the General Excellence category in 2009.

It remains unclear how the newspaper will fit into the archdiocese’s new communications strategy – and how the transition will affect The Catholic Spirit’s 13 workers. Guild members, Pierskalla said, are feeling uncertain about their wages, benefits and job security.

“We’ve had two meetings, and we still don’t know what the transition plan is,” he said. “Jobs aren’t necessarily going to move over the way they are now. We know they are not moving the newspaper as it is over there; they are changing. But as of yet we don’t know what the changes are.”

In a statement released today, the archdiocese confirmed plans to continue publishing on a bi-monthly schedule, but acknowledged that some Guild members will lose their jobs at the end of the month due to “overlap in functions.” For workers absorbed into the office of communications, their Guild contract will be replaced by a non-negotiable employment agreement called “Justice in Employment.”

According to the archdiocese’s release: “This employment agreement, which has been in place in the Archdiocese since 1999, provides a number of features that provide extensive protections for employees. In addition, the Archdiocese provides an Office of Conciliation to assist employees in protecting their rights afforded under the ‘Justice in Employment’ agreement.”

Pierskalla and other workers say they would prefer to keep their collective-bargaining rights.

“I would like to stay within the unit,” Pierskalla said. “I would like to have collective bargaining. If this were to be lost, what I would miss most are those opportunities to be treated like a peer at the table. Not to assume immediately that I won’t be treated that way by management going forward, but it’s an unknown right now.”

As a religious entity, the archdiocese appears to be on firm legal footing in dissolving the Catholic Spirit bargaining unit. But workers say the archdiocese, in refusing their request for voluntary recognition, ignores Catholic doctrine supporting their right to union representation.

In their letter to Nienstedt, workers cited the writings of Pope John Paul II. The letter states: “Laborem Exercens, under The Importance of Unions, No. 20, states: ‘All these rights, together with the need for the workers themselves to secure them, give rise to yet another right: the right of association, that is to form associations for the purpose of defending the vital interest of those employed in the various professions.’”

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