If You Read the Washington Post Today You Are a Scab

Hundreds of staffers are on strike today as contract negotiations stall and jobs are on the chopping block.

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An easy task to add to your plate today: definitely not reading The Washington Post. Some 750 journalists and business-side staffers are engaged in a one-day strike and have asked the public not to engage with any Post content for 24 hours. So don’t, or you will forever be a scab.

As always, this action wasn’t arrived at lightly; it comes after a staggering 18 months of contract negotiations, in which the Post Guild says management is “refusing to bargain in good faith,” particularly over key issues. It’s the first walkout at the paper since the 1970s.

"We all work at The Washington Post because we believe in its mission and we believe in what we do. And we care deeply about the work we do, the people, the communities, the stories we cover,” Marissa Lang, a Post reporter and member of the bargaining team, told NPR. “I think this indicates how seriously we all are taking this, how deeply felt a lot of these concerns are in the Washington Post newsroom and in the company at large.”

The action comes after the paper’s interim chief executive, Patty Stonesifer, announced in October that the Post would be cutting 240 jobs from its 2,600-strong workforce, which were intended to take the form of voluntary buyouts. But last week, it was reported that only about half that number have taken the bait, and if those numbers weren’t hit, the “voluntary” part would fall away, likely resulting in layoffs with far less generous terms.

The Post, which is owned by corporate overlord Jeff Bezos, was on track to lose $100 million this year, and the paper is down 500,000 subscriptions this year from its 2020 peak, according to The New York Times. It’s worth noting that that competing paper in New York not only hasn’t struggled with the same economic shortfalls but has grown and thrived on digital subscriptions; Post journalists rightly blame their bosses for failing to replicate that success. But, as always, workers’ livelihoods are on the lines over poor business decisions that they had nothing to do with.

Bezos, who is extremely hostile to organized labor, is at last tally worth something like $170 BILLION, an ungodly, unearned sum that makes a $100 million loss at one of the nation’s top newspapers a rounding error. He could single-handedly save all these jobs, even INVEST MORE in the paper’s growth, but he chooses not to. We’re told that’s just how it works: Workers pay the price for corporate greed. Our only recourse is to stand together and say enough.