The union representing editorial employees on the metropolis’s greatest native newspaper chain says in a federal grievance {that a} reporter was fired in retaliation for union organizing, as the 2 sides head into their first bargaining session this week.
Renee DeLorenzo, who most not too long ago coated enterprise options and cultural points at native information web site QNS, was dismissed from her job on Oct. 29, the identical day that Schneps Media acquired a competing Queens paper.
Schneps Union, which represents editorial employees at amNewYork and different neighborhood papers throughout the 5 boroughs and Lengthy Island, filed a grievance with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board accusing Schneps Media of failing to tell the union of its determination to dismiss DeLorenzo and refusing the union’s makes an attempt to debate the matter additional.
In a grievance submitted final week, Schneps Union advised DeLorenzo’s firing was linked to her union activism: “Renee was an outspoken proponent of the Union in the course of the unit’s latest organizing marketing campaign, a reality the Employer knew.”
At her firing, DeLorenzo was instructed that she was being laid off on account of the corporate’s acquisition of the Queens Chronicle, a competitor. However she instructed The Metropolis Reporter that as she grew to become extra concerned within the union, showing in two Instagram movies selling their marketing campaign, administration retaliated, first reassigning her from a beat masking politics, after which firing her final month.
Schneps Media CEO Josh Schneps instructed The Metropolis Reporter “it will be inappropriate to touch upon a problem now presently underneath evaluation by the NLRB.”
Roughly 30 Schneps Media reporters voted to affix Native 1096 of the NewsGuild of New York in July. Since then, they’ve accused Schneps of stonewalling negotiations for higher wages, advantages and dealing circumstances. The 2 sides are scheduled to fulfill for his or her first bargaining session on Thursday. Beginning salaries for reporters vary between $40,000 and $50,000 a yr.
DeLorenzo mentioned she was “in shock” and began “panicking” when she discovered of her dismissal.
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Union leaders mentioned they have been blindsided by Schneps’ announcement final month that it had bought a competitor, the Queens Chronicle, the identical day the corporate laid off DeLorenzo, who had been working at QNS for a couple of yr.
Schneps Media is owned by Victoria and Josh Schneps, a mother-son duo who collectively function dozens of hyperlocal newspapers in New York Metropolis and Lengthy Island. The corporate boasts 2 million weekly readers throughout its manufacturers and formidable promoting prowess amongst its community of neighborhood papers.
The corporate has confronted criticism for cozying as much as the facilities of political energy in New York: for years it distributed a free, semi-regular paper, boosting then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams to about 140,000 households within the borough. Postage for that paper, One Brooklyn, was paid for by taxpayers whereas Schneps collected promoting income.
Victoria Schneps based the corporate in 1985 with the Queens Courier from her Bayside house “with 4 kids, a dream and a prayer and $250,” she instructed the New York Instances in 2017. She slowly pieced collectively a media empire together with the Homosexual Metropolis Information, Brooklyn Paper, the Bronx Instances, the Lengthy Island Press and others. In 2019, Schneps acquired and merged two free citywide papers, amNewYork and Metro New York, in a significant coup for the corporate that led to layoffs at these papers.
The corporate fiercely resisted its employees’s union effort, first rejecting its request for voluntary recognition, forcing an election overseen by the NLRB, after which attempting to toss six of its members out of the union by difficult their eligibility. Schneps employed Bond, Schoeneck & King, a infamous union-busting legislation agency.
Since launching its organizing push, Schneps Union has mounted escalating actions to maneuver the corporate to discount on a primary contract. Final month, its members rallied exterior an organization gala celebrating Queens enterprise leaders; the union additionally took credit score for the corporate’s last-minute cancellation of a September gala celebrating labor leaders the place the union additionally deliberate to protest.
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The union typically poked enjoyable at administration. In late July the union revealed a video on its Instagram web page, starring DeLorenzo, the place a cartoonish voice narrates parts of an e-mail that Victoria Schneps despatched to employees within the lead-up to the union election that month.
“Vote NO to the union. Give us an opportunity to handle your considerations and not using a third occasion,” wrote Schneps.
DeLorenzo was employed a yr in the past as a common project reporter at QNS, a web-based publication masking Queens, the place she labored on politics, elections and different tales. However this summer season — across the similar time she appeared in two pro-union Instagram movies — she was requested to cowl arts and tradition as a substitute.
On Oct. 29, she was making ready to work on tales about road security and the New York Metropolis Marathon when she acquired a message asking to fulfill instantly along with her boss and the corporate’s HR director. Anticipating her firing, DeLorenzo mentioned she twice and with out success requested {that a} union consultant be current for the assembly. She mentioned she rejected a proposal of two weeks’ severance as a result of she wouldn’t signal a separation settlement she believed “would have signed away my proper to talk about what occurred.”
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