The stage is set for a long, arduous battle between the new union at the Daily Star and the corporate overlords.
The bigwigs at the USA Today Co had an opportunity to voluntarily recognize the union, but they decided against it last week.
Now, the members of the Arizona Daily Star News Guild are gearing up for a union election as they try to get fair pay, protections against layoffs and a say in how AI is used in their newsroom. They’re aiming to hold their election on November 10.
But this could be a yearslong slog for the 19 (of 20) reporters, photographers and copy editors who are trying to form the union. Keep in mind, it took the Arizona Republic union four years to get its first contract with the corporation that is now USA Today Co.
As we wrote last week, we’d like to help them out, especially if they end up going on strike.
Today, we’re launching a “strike fund” to do exactly that.
The Star guild members took a risk when they announced they were forming a union.
We know what it’s like to take a risk. The Tucson Agenda is essentially a daily leap of faith.
For three years now, we’ve been blown away by the support we’ve gotten from our readers. Now, we’re asking you Agenda readers to step up for the Star union and show the USA Today Co executives that Tucson’s news junkies are backing the union members.
Judging by the 157 readers who said they’d step up last week — including more than 100 readers who said they’d put up money to help the Star reporters — we’re pretty confident you all will do just that.
“Light fading from the Star. Count me in to help,” one reader said.
“This seems practical, doable, and effective,” another reader chimed in.
“We need to protect a free press as a vital component of democracy,” said another.
We were very encouraged by your responses. In fact, the longer we left the reader poll open, the more readers said they’d step up.
Today, we’re launching the mechanisms you can use to show your financial support.
Here’s the plan
We’re going to do a weeklong sprint and see what happens. After a lot of consideration, that ended up being the simplest way to get this started.
Here’s what it will look like:
Every dollar that comes in during the next week will go directly into our “strike fund” that we’ll use to pay Star reporters as freelancers if they go on strike.
We’ll keep a running, public tally of the money. If this turns into real money, we’ll talk to a lawyer about setting up the right financial structure. But that can get expensive, and we don’t want to spend your money on lawyers unless it’s enough money to make us nervous.
The money stays in the fund for at least a year, unless the news guild goes on strike before then, in which case we’ll pay the striking reporters to freelance for us.
If the guild doesn’t go on strike by this time next year, then we’ll find a way to use the money in the spirit in which it was given.
We have two options on the table for the “strike fund.”
First, we’re going to turn on the “pay what you want” option for the next seven days.
You can put in $1. You can put in $1 million. Entirely up to you.
The “pay what you want” process is fairly simple. Still, if you run into a problem, let us know at [email protected].
Second, we’re going to take the first year’s payment from every new paid subscriber for the next week and put it into the strike fund.
This is straightforward and operates just like a normal upgrade.
Finally, we’re going to organize an email campaign. That one requires a little more doing, so we’ll come back soon with an easy way to pull that off.
We’re hoping the bigwigs will see plenty of local news readers are ready to support the guild.
In the meantime, we’ll keep hassling the powers that be in the news world.
But remember: Money talks louder than words, especially when you’re talking to corporate overlords.
We didn’t want to end the week without a quick write-up about Prop 422 — the 20-year extension of the one-tenth-of-a-cent sales tax dedicated to Reid Park Zoo.
This amounts to a penny in taxes on a (small) $10 pizza, but the real test of the ballot proposition is whether Tucson voters are still upset about the Barnum Hill fiasco five years later.
Competing signs on Prop 422 line the boundaries of Reid Park.
Backers of Prop 422 want to be clear: This extension of the dedicated sales tax isn’t going to expand the boundaries of the zoo. Barnum Hill is safe for the foreseeable future.
Reid Park Zoo advocates say the measure will redevelop space inside the zoo’s existing footprint, keep funding veterinary care and expand current exhibits. If Prop 422 passes, a new habitat for pygmy hippos is at the top of their list to build.
But Save the Heart of Reid Park wants locals to vote against the measure, saying Tucson deserves much more transparency when it comes to the future of the zoo.
The group is still sore about Barnum Hill, but they do make a good point. Outside of voter-approved propositions, the public doesn’t get a vote on the future of Reid Park Zoo.
Remembering Dolores: Nearly 200 people gathered at Joaquin Murrieta Park for a candlelight vigil mourning the death of renowned activist Dolores Huerta, the Sentinel’s Mia Kortright reports. The crowd chanted “¡Que viva Dolores Huerta!” and “¡Sí se puede!” during the vigil. Huerta was a big fixture in Tucson politics. Democratic U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva said she considered Huerta one of her tías, noting how often the famed union icon attended her family’s private events.
Another detention center nightmare: A Romanian woman is on life support after apparently attempting to take her own life after spending less than two weeks inside the ICE detention center in Eloy, the Star’s Emily Bregel reports. The woman has bipolar disorder, but family members said they don’t believe she was getting her medication regularly. Meanwhile, Star columnist Tim Steller writes that a Tucson judge should get involved in a case where ICE has dragged its feet on the judge’s order to return a man the agency deported to Equatorial Guinea.
New local data center regulations: The Pima County Planning and Zoning Commission has taken a second pass at new rules for data centers, KVOA’s Eric Fink reports. The commission’s recommendations include requiring data centers to sit at least a half-mile from residential neighborhoods and limiting ambient noise. The Pima County Board of Supervisors will decide on the new rules in December. Oro Valley is making similar moves to ban large-scale data centers, Tucson Local Media’s Dave Perry reports.
Bisbee is scary enough: It’s not the ghosts and ghouls you should fear when visiting Bisbee. Its history is already filled with enough scary stories to keep you up at night, the Herald/Review’s Matt Hickman writes. Ahead of Halloween, Hickman tagged along on a new true-crime walking tour, which skips the ghost stories for newspaper and court records, and he got caught up in the history of the mining town.
On air today: Joe will be on Arizona Public Media’s “The Press Room” today to talk about the midterms with Steller, the Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel and AZPM’s Steve Jess.
We have no idea about the time and money that Republican gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs’ allies at Turning Point has put into signs.
Certainly thousands of dollars in consultant-approved language and then printing costs, not to mention the man-hours of putting them across Arizona.
It only took one can of black spray paint, criminally wielded by a Tucsonan, to change the messaging on a few of Biggs’ signs.
By spray-painting over the word “forget,” someone effectively changed the side these signs are on.
While campaign-sign related violence is never the answer and we don’t endorse it, we do think putting “do not” so close to “vote Biggs” was a bad idea.
