Unionized ProPublica staff are on strike over AI, layoffs, and wages

Unionized staff at ProPublica, one of the country’s leading nonprofit newsrooms, are walking off the job for 24 hours beginning Wednesday and asking the public to honor a digital picket line.

The roughly 150 members of the ProPublica Guild are in the midst of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement after unionizing in 2023. The union says key issues are still in contention, including protections around the use of AI, “just cause” provisions around disciplining or firing an employee, layoff protections, and wages.

“We’ve been working to resolve this quietly for over two years,” says Katie Campbell, a ProPublica Guild member. “This is a moment to make clear to management and to the public how important these issues are to the people who produce this work.”

The unit voted in March to authorize a strike if a deal was not reached with ProPublica management.

One of the major issues workers are walking out over is how generative AI will be used at ProPublica — and disclosed to audiences — going forward. Many newsroom unions are negotiating AI language in contracts for the first time since tools have become widely accessible in the last few years. ProPublica management recently introduced an AI policy, which Mark Olalde, a member of the bargaining committee, described as “unilateral implementation.” The NewsGuild, which represents ProPublica staff, filed an unfair labor practice charge earlier this week over the implementation of the policy.

“The guidelines are a little bit squishy because there’s a general agreement that we’re not using [AI] to write, we’re not using it to create photos, videos, things like that at this point,” Olalde says. “What’s on the website is really as far as the company has written things formally, which is why we’re trying to enshrine some of these things in an AI article in the contract.”

Alexis Stephens, ProPublica’s director of communications, said in an email that the company is “committed to reaching a fair and sustainable contract” with the union. Stephens added that the company’s proposals on remaining issues are what has been accepted at other NewsGuild shops.

“It’s too soon to know exactly how AI will affect our work. Rather than make promises we can’t responsibly keep, we are exploring how these technologies can create more space for investigative reporting and thinking deeply and creatively, not less,” Stephens said.

Some newsrooms have gradually started to embrace the use of AI, albeit in different ways. The New York Times, for example, has used AI to help its reporters parse documents related to Jeffrey Epstein; ProPublica reporters used AI tools in their investigation into the rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at nonprofits. On the other end of the spectrum, an editor at Fortune has churned out hundreds of stories written by AI.

ProPublica staff have varying opinions on AI in the workforce, Campbell says. (The union represents both editorial staff like reporters and editors as well as staff working in development and product.) Some staff see AI as a way to automate tedious tasks, freeing up their time to work on bigger things.

“I think that there are times when it can be very ethically, fairly, and accurately used as a tool, but when it starts to replace work that humans do and core functions that can be done better by humans, I think that’s kind of the thing that some folks are struggling with,” Campbell says.

Above all, workers want protections against layoffs as a result of AI, and for workers to have input into the use of these tools as the industry and technology evolves. The union also wants public disclosures when AI is used to produce stories.

In support of the 24-hour work stoppage, the union is asking readers and audiences to not visit ProPublica, click on stories, or otherwise engage with ProPublica content on other platforms and partner organizations.

Update, April 8th: Added comments from ProPublica.