In landslide election, Maine Trust staff vote to expand news union

Journalists and other staff of the state’s largest network of independent news and media outlets have voted to join the News Guild of Maine, expanding the Maine Trust for Local News’ unionized workforce and extending labor protections to workers who said they had been subject to pay disparities and more vulnerable to layoffs.

According to a release from the Guild, the National Labor Relations Board tallied the results Monday and found workers voted 34-1 to join the union.

Guild President Megan Gray, an arts and culture reporter at the Portland Press Herald, said in a statement that the vote “confirms what we already knew: Our coworkers want to join the News Guild of Maine. They want to have the same voice and the same bargaining power as their peers across the company.”

The Guild, which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, already represented about 150 workers at the Trust’s papers and now includes the 50 or so remaining non-union jobs at the Sun Journal in Lewiston, The Times Record in Brunswick and the Trust’s other 17 weekly publications. Workers at the daily Kennebec Journal are represented by a separate branch of the CWA and are in the process of merging with the guild.

The Guild filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board in August after the nonprofit Trust, a subsidiary of the Colorado-based National Trust for Local News, declined to voluntarily recognize the expanded union. The Trust did not respond to a request for comment by publication.

Maine Trust for Local News workers rally to expand their union

At a rally last month launching the union drive, several Trust staff highlighted the pay gap between Guild members and those who remained unrepresented. 

Paul Bagnall, who has worked as a full time reporter in Maine since 2022 and now works at The Times Record, said he makes $18 per hour as a nonunion reporter while his unionized colleagues at the Press Herald start at a minimum of $28.75 per hour.

“With the cost of living going up, my paycheck has already stretched to a breaking point,” Bagnall said. “I am currently priced out of potential sources of information — going out to events, restaurants and cafes due to the cost of living — and it’s still rising.” 

Kendra Caruso, a staff writer at the Sun Journal covering health, said, “Those of us who are not represented have little influence over the environment in which we work. That changes today. Today we demand equal pay, equal respect and the same job securities that our represented colleagues have.”

Gray, the Guild president, said Tuesday that the expanded union looks forward to negotiating a contract “that isn’t rooted in old models but reflects who we are today.”

“Under nonprofit ownership, we are building a business model that could be a roadmap to sustainability for local news organizations across the country,” she added. “We are here because we are invested in that future. But we need the Maine Trust to invest in ours too.”

Maine Morning Star is a nonprofit outlet affiliated with the national organization States Newsroom. It is not a part of the Maine Trust for Local News.