Day by day, person by person, the readership of newspapers is dwindling. Millions of news hungry readers are satisfying their hunger on the Internet. No longer are the mainstream newspapers the only purveyors of what’s happening in the world. And as their circulation drops so do their ad revenues.
As a result, newspapers are laying off many workers and hiring freelancers and temps, all to cut costs.
An example of this has occurred at The Patriot-News, a venerable old newspaper in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A majority of the editors, reporters, and photographers voted to end their representation by the Harrisburg Newspaper Guild, which had represented the paper’s employees since 1934. It was the last of the paper’s unions, and its decertification portends what will be happening not just in the newspaper industry, but in other industries that must also adjust to the new economic realities of the 21st Century.
Wherever one looks, many unions are becoming superfluous. And where they are not yet superfluous, they are an obstacle to increased productivity and profitability.
