Murphy repeats support for Gannett union, but won’t tell all reporters to follow

Gov. Phil Murphy reiterated his support of journalists at The (Bergen) Record, the Daily Record, and the New Jersey Herald to unionize, but stopped short of telling employees of other New Jersey daily newspapers to do the same.

“I can’t speak for every organization, but I did tweet out my support for the folks who are attempting to unionize,” Murphy said at a press conference on Friday.  “That’s very simply because I believe in unions and I believe we are the quintessential organized labor state.”

A total of 72 employees of the three newspapers and NorthJersey.com signed on to form a union affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York and have asked Gannett to voluntarily recognize their new union.

Gannett has not publicly addressed the request, and no coverage of the move by their employees has appeared in their newspapers or on their website.

Murphy praised labor unions as a way of protecting middle class workers.

“If you look at history, post-World War II, over these seven or eight decades, you see an almost perfect correlation between rise of union membership and other metrics for the strength of the middle class in our state,” said Murphy.  “I’m a big union guy.  I believe in it.”

The Record Guild slapped Gannett on Thursday for failing to cover an attempt by their employees to form a union.

“As a media institution that serves millions of Americans, if Gannet truly wanted to espouse its values  — strong local news, democracy and service  —  then editorial management should change its rule to be among the first to not only cover this historic shift in media that showcases journalists standing together to strengthen their publications and diversify their newsrooms to better support the communities they serve, but it should recognize the union as well,” The Record Guild Organizing Committee said in a statement printed only by the New Jersey Globe.

Dan Sforza, the executive editor of The (Bergen) Record, did not respond to requests for comment a 9:49 AM and 8:28 PM on Wednesday, at 4:28 PM on Thursday, and at 3:43 PM today.