This contract provides a strong foundation to build on down the line, and would not exist without years of organizing and hard work from dozens of past and present employees!

✅ Byline/ethics protections for editorial staff
✅ Staff can decline to participate in fundraising/marketing campaigns
✅ Guardrails on generative AI usage
✅ Guaranteed continuation of the company's 3% match for retirement accounts
✅ Better workplace safety guarantees

✅ Expanded leaves of absence, including for bereavement, abortion, vaccinations, and paid fellowships
✅ Additional paid holidays, including December 24th-January 1st
✅ Guarantees of editorial independence
✅ Limitations on any return-to-office mandate

Other big wins:

✅ Guaranteed severance in the event of layoffs
✅ Rollover and cashout of vacation time
✅ Company-subsidized transit passes
✅ Reimbursement for professional memberships, accreditations, and conferences/courses
✅ Coverage of moving expenses if employees are transferred between cities

We're coming away with some AMAZING wins. Last October, we secured an interim $70k salary floor for all Noisy Creek employees.

Our new contract enshrines that as the minimum starting salary, while also guaranteeing salary bumps for longtime staff, and annual cost of living adjustments.

Yeah, @suzettesmith.bsky.social has been trying to recover @portlandmercury.bsky.social but Bluesky Support hasn't been very helpful yet.

Public support is invaluable, and so we encourage you to support our friends at PBS Cascade Union. Our managers have proven they’re ready to invest in local journalism. We challenge Cascade PBS to do the same!

We'll be keeping Bluesky supporters more up to date, going forward. Because it’s not over yet! This deal is just an interim agreement. We are still bargaining a contract, and we still need y’all to back us in the next fight.

We did most of that outreach on Twitter, and it reached more than 120k people, which gave us the confidence to walk into a meeting last Wednesday and demand better for our workers. And we made a great fucking deal.

Thankfully, many of our supporters shared our outrage. We appreciate your kind words. We may have screenshotted them to revisit when we’re down...

Recap: Our Noisy Union—staff at The Stranger, Portland Mercury, EverOut, and Bold Type Tickets—learned on Fri Sept 21 that a Stranger position job listing offered a higher salary than our longest serving news reporter. We didn’t just get mad—we got organized.

We credit public pressure from our supporters as a massive influence on this outcome, and are grateful that the bosses heard us, particularly our new owner Brady Walkinshaw.

We’ve built a reputation on eating the rich and standing up for progressive values. We're asking Index Media to embody those values through voluntary recognition.

We realize the best way to ensure we are heard in shaping the future of this company, our roles, and our wages, is to form a union.

Index Media workers are deeply invested in our work, but we face uncertainty, ever-growing responsibilities, and wages far below those of our industry competitors.