ProPublica journalists walked off the job on Wednesday, for 24 hours, after more than two years of negotiations that failed to yield a deal for a union contract.<\/p>\n
It was the first major labor action at ProPublica, one of the country\u2019s largest nonprofit newsrooms. About 150 of its workers, including reporters, copy editors and communications staff, unionized in 2023 and have been negotiating a contract since.<\/p>\n
The core disagreements were over wage increases, layoff protections and the use of artificial intelligence, said Katie Campbell, a video journalist who has worked at ProPublica for eight years. She said workers wanted a say in how A.I. was being adopted at the company, protections against being replaced by the technology and transparency for readers about its use.<\/p>\n
\u201cProPublica is its workers, and when more than 100 people step away from their work for a day, that\u2019s significant,\u201d Ms. Campbell said, adding, \u201cWe want to get back to work, but we want a fair contract to do this work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newsrooms around the country are grappling<\/a> with similar issues over the use of A.I. in reporting, editing and disseminating journalism. Some embarrassing errors, such as Bloomberg\u2019s corrections<\/a> for A.I.-generated summaries or the inadvertent publication<\/a> of A.I.-written articles, have raised the stakes. Collective bargaining agreements at unionized newsrooms increasingly contain language that offer protections against replacing jobs with A.I. and guardrails for its use.<\/p>\n ProPublica\u2019s union is represented by the NewsGuild of New York, which also represents some journalists at The New York Times.<\/p>\n A ProPublica spokeswoman said the company had made proposals that mirrored those accepted by the NewsGuild at other news organizations. She said ProPublica had never had layoffs.<\/p>\n \u201cProPublica is committed to reaching a fair and sustainable first contract to cement the strong pay and benefits we\u2019ve always provided our staff,\u201d the spokeswoman said.<\/p>\n The unionized workers\u2019 authorization for the strike took place on March 20, with 92 percent of members voting in favor. On Monday, the union filed an unfair-labor-practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against ProPublica, accusing it of failing to bargain with the union before putting in place an A.I. policy.<\/p>\n