The union representing editorial staff at the city’s biggest local newspaper chain says in a federal complaint that a reporter was fired in retaliation for union organizing, as the two sides head into their first bargaining session this week.
Renee DeLorenzo, who most recently covered business features and cultural issues at local news site QNS, was dismissed from her job on Oct. 29, the same day that Schneps Media acquired a competing Queens paper.
Schneps Union, which represents editorial staff at amNewYork and other neighborhood papers across the five boroughs and Long Island, filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board accusing Schneps Media of failing to inform the union of its decision to dismiss DeLorenzo and refusing the union’s attempts to discuss the matter further.
In a complaint submitted last week, Schneps Union suggested DeLorenzo’s firing was linked to her union activism: “Renee was an outspoken proponent of the Union during the unit’s recent organizing campaign, a fact the Employer knew.”
At her firing, DeLorenzo was told that she was being laid off as a result of the company’s acquisition of the Queens Chronicle, a competitor. But she told The City Reporter that as she became more involved in the union, appearing in two Instagram videos promoting their campaign, management retaliated, first reassigning her from a beat covering politics, and then firing her last month.
Schneps Media CEO Josh Schneps told The City Reporter “it would be inappropriate to comment on an issue now currently under review by the NLRB.”
Approximately 30 Schneps Media reporters voted to join Local 1096 of the NewsGuild of New York in July. Since then, they’ve accused Schneps of stonewalling negotiations for better wages, benefits and working conditions. The two sides are scheduled to meet for their first bargaining session on Thursday. Starting salaries for reporters range between $40,000 and $50,000 a year.
DeLorenzo said she was “in shock” and started “panicking” when she learned of her dismissal.
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Union leaders said they were blindsided by Schneps’ announcement last month that it had purchased a competitor, the Queens Chronicle, the same day the company laid off DeLorenzo, who had been working at QNS for about a year.
Schneps Media is owned by Victoria and Josh Schneps, a mother-son duo who jointly operate dozens of hyperlocal newspapers in New York City and Long Island. The company boasts 2 million weekly readers across its brands and formidable advertising prowess among its network of community papers.
The company has faced criticism for cozying up to the centers of political power in New York: for years it distributed a free, semi-regular paper, boosting then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams to about 140,000 households in the borough. Postage for that paper, One Brooklyn, was paid for by taxpayers while Schneps collected advertising revenue.
Victoria Schneps founded the company in 1985 with the Queens Courier from her Bayside home “with four children, a dream and a prayer and $250,” she told the New York Times in 2017. She slowly pieced together a media empire including the Gay City News, Brooklyn Paper, the Bronx Times, the Long Island Press and others. In 2019, Schneps acquired and merged two free citywide papers, amNewYork and Metro New York, in a major coup for the company that led to layoffs at those papers.
The company fiercely resisted its staff’s union effort, first rejecting its request for voluntary recognition, forcing an election overseen by the NLRB, and then trying to toss six of its members out of the union by challenging their eligibility. Schneps hired Bond, Schoeneck & King, a notorious union-busting law firm.
Since launching its organizing push, Schneps Union has mounted escalating actions to move the company to bargain on a first contract. Last month, its members rallied outside a company gala celebrating Queens business leaders; the union also took credit for the company’s last-minute cancellation of a September gala celebrating labor leaders where the union also planned to protest.
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The union sometimes poked fun at management. In late July the union published a video on its Instagram page, starring DeLorenzo, where a cartoonish voice narrates portions of an email that Victoria Schneps sent to staff in the lead-up to the union election that month.
“Vote NO to the union. Give us a chance to address your concerns without a third party,” wrote Schneps.
DeLorenzo was hired a year ago as a general assignment reporter at QNS, an online publication covering Queens, where she worked on politics, elections and other stories. But this summer — around the same time she appeared in two pro-union Instagram videos — she was asked to cover arts and culture instead.
On Oct. 29, she was preparing to work on stories about street safety and the New York City Marathon when she received a message asking to meet immediately with her boss and the company’s HR director. Anticipating her firing, DeLorenzo said she twice and without success requested that a union representative be present for the meeting. She said she rejected an offer of two weeks’ severance because she would not sign a separation agreement she believed “would have signed away my right to speak about what happened.”
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The post Union Hits Local News Giant With Federal Labor Complaint After Reporter Is Fired appeared first on The City Reporter.
