The Cleveland Plain Dealer has changed drastically over the past fifteen years, as print journalism has been replaced primarily with digital. However, as the newspaper has shifted to digital, its owners—Advanced Publications—have used that as an opportunity to undermine its workers' rights. This process came to a head today, in the midst of our global pandemic. After 22 unionized employees were laid off last week, today, the last 14 remaining unionized staffers at the Plain Dealer have been banned from covering their beats in the region of Cleveland, permitted only to report on Cleveland's outlying counties. This "reassignment" is a clear attempt to eliminate their jobs, following many years of reductions of unionized Plain Dealer staff to be replaced by non-unionized and contracted workers for Cleveland.com. As it stands, this will be one of many cost-cutting measures during this pandemic made at the expense of workers, to protect the bottom line of wealthy business owners.  

We the public, demand that Advance Publications, the cost-cutting owner of the Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com, abandon its policies of attacking organized labor. We demand they guarantee the jobs of the remaining staffers, rehire recently laid-off unionized employees, and allow the employees of Cleveland.com to join the Newspaper Guild of which the Plain Dealer staffers are members. This moment of national crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is exactly the moment when we need experienced local reporters, and exactly the moment when we need to ensure protections for labor.