STATEMENT: NYGUILD Leadership Commits to Holding Employers Accountable on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

NEW YORK – Members of The NewsGuild of New York have won hard-fought contracts requiring employers to uphold the basic principles of a diverse workplace and make good-faith efforts to promote equity and inclusion in hiring.

Now, we’re seeing many employers across the public and private sectors — including here in the media capital of the world — seek to forestall their obligations to diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion in the workplace. 

The NewsGuild of New York Executive Committee strongly condemns the erosion of any principle aimed at combating pervasive discrimination, especially at work.

As the Trump Administration attempts to toss aside federal labor law, it’s imperative that employers adhere to mutually agreed-upon collective bargaining agreements. Allowing management to shirk any of their obligations is a slippery slope – one we don’t intend to fall down. 

Our union will continue to fight for workplaces open to people of all races, genders, religions, sexual orientations, physical or mental abilities and socioeconomic backgrounds. It’s important that workers from unique backgrounds are not only welcomed, but that their perspectives are cherished and their livelihoods are protected.

We will enforce the articles of our contracts that promote and advance this goal to the letter, as we always have.

The principles of creating diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion are foundational to a functioning American democracy, as is the journalism thousands of our members produce every day. Giving up on those concepts would be giving up on our fight for worker solidarity, especially with those most aggrieved and unable to stand up for themselves.

And The NewsGuild of New York has never backed down from a fight.

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ABOUT THE NEWSGUILD OF NEW YORK

The NewsGuild of New York, Local 31003 of the The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, is a labor union representing nearly 6,000 media professionals and other employees at New York area news organizations, including The New York Times, Condé Nast, The New Yorker, ProPublica, Thomson Reuters, The Nation, The New York Daily News, TIME, PEOPLE, Consumer Reports, and The Daily Beast. The NewsGuild of New York advocates for journalists to have a voice in the newsroom, for press freedom, for inclusive and diverse workplaces, and for just cause, no exceptions, for all media workers.