New Hampshire NewsGuild

11/12/2025

After more than three years of strike and legal fights, the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh has prevaild against the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Congrats.

Striking workers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette react to the Nov. 10, 2025 ruling ordering the newspaper to restore the contract it illegally tore up five ye...

10/24/2025

Union Leader executives hob-nobbed with corporate buddies last night to extoll the Fist Amendment. Wanna know what the First Amendment is? This is the First Amendment.
Our crowd included four union presidents, a Manchester aldermen, two candidates for aldermen, three retired reporters, a minister, members of the Democratic Socialists of NH, and of course, our members.

10/23/2025

UNION LEADER FIGHTS RIGHT-TO-KNOW REQUEST;
URGES STATE AGENCY TO KEEP BAILOUT DETAILS SECRET
The New Hampshire Union Leader -- long a leader in government disclosure and transparency -- encouraged state officials to withhold key details of last year's $2 million company bailout.
The company urged against disclosure as the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority weighed public-records requests filed by the New Hampshire NewsGuild for information related to the bailout.
The Business Finance Authority complied, and any public accounting of the bailout funds will apparently never take place.
Last month, the Business Finance Authority released the correspondence it had received from the Union Leader in response to the NewsGuild's request.
This is from a document that the Union Leader submitted to the Business Finance Authority:
* "Release of these details could affect the negotiation position of other corporations in a similar circumstance and have a chilling effect on future negotiations of this type."
* "If public release of these details was a condition of borrowing, it would have been tough to enter into fruitful negotiations and thus negated the need for any borrowing."
* The company also said that some documents should not be released because details "are likely to have been changed" and release would expose investors and owners to "undue exposure."
The Union Leader has long advocated for public disclosure and the First Amendment. In fact, one of its owners, the Nackey Loeb School of Communications, holds its First Amendment Award event this afternoon.
Late last year, the Union Leader inked a deal that provided $1 million in public funds and $1 million in matching private equity to extinguish long-term pension obligations.
The NewsGuild has sought details on how that money is spent. We know only one: the Union Leader paid $786,200 to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency, to assume $2.6 million in pension liabilities for managers and other non-union workers at the company. That information was obtained through a federal Freedom of Information request.
However, the Business Finance Authority refuses to release details on payments to extinguish the liabilities held by two union-related pension plans, the CWA-International Typographical Union plan and the Graphic Communications International Union pension plan.
Those pension plans covered unions that no longer represented workers at the company. The Newspaper Guild International Pension Plan remains in effect for Guild members and is in good financial standing.

09/10/2025

SECRET FILE SURFACES DURING CSR LAYOFF
The New Hampshire NewsGuild has asked Union Leader management for any undisclosed disciplinary records of Guild members, after the company produced a secret "disciplinary record" when they terminated CSR Joe Pecoraro.

The company-produced dossier included spreadsheets, conversation recaps and an unpursued termination memo. The company turned over the material when the Guild challenged Joe’s layoff outside of seniority.

The layoff took place last month. Joe had been with the company for three years and had struggled with health problems over the past year.

Most surprising, the dossier included a March 31 memo by Circulation Manager Don Groele, who contemplated Joe’s termination. But nothing happened for months, except Groele jotting down Joe’s supposed mishaps.

Nineteen times, Groele summarized brief conversations he held with Joe about supposed mistakes, but took no formal action. Joe passed a performance evaluation in April 2024 with flying colors, and his personnel file shows no record of a review this year, despite a March hire date.

“I was never written up, never given a warning,” Joe said.

The Guild is alarmed that management is keeping secret records about an employee’s job performance and that those unchallenged records surface when an employee is targeted in a layoff.

At this point, any Guild member should demand union representation – it’s your legal right – at the slightest hint that the conversation involves a company policy violation, a mistake or anything that could be used against you.

While the imposed conditions allow termination only for a good reason, layoffs are a different animal.

The imposed conditions call for members who are facing a layoff to be scored on a number of criteria, including their “disciplinary record.”

The Guild can challenge an unfair score, but the company has played unfairly during such challenges.

For example, one previous layoff involved scoring that blatantly contradicted a rosy performance review. The company dismissed the contradiction, and the member opted against a further challenge.

With Joe, the company rejected the Guild’s objections and proceeded with the layoff.

The Guild could have challenged the layoff further, but Joe opted to take two weeks of paid leave before his termination date. He started a new job the first week of September.

In early August, the company notified the Guild that it was eliminating customer service hours on Saturday mornings, beginning Sept. 6.

Going forward, CSRs were only going to work weekday shifts. That meant that one of the four positions would be eliminated, company Executive Vice President Joyce Levesque told the Guild.

07/18/2025

NH Business Finance Authority
won't release bailout numbers...
The New Hampshire Business Finance Authority -- the New Hampshire government organization that engineered the $2 million bailout of the Union Leader Corp. -- has refused to release key information about the deal to the New Hampshire NewsGuild.
The BFA released four documents to the Guild last week, but blacked out key information in the documents: namely, how much the Union Leader owed two union-backed pension funds and the amount the Union Leader paid to erase the debt.
The Guild is considering its next move, but has not ruled out an appeal.
"This involves $1 million in public funds that were lent to the Union Leader under favorable terms," said Mark Hayward, member-organizer for the NH NewsGuild. "We deserve to know how those funds, and the matching $1 million in equity investment, were spent."
The Guild had filed the public records request on Dec. 12. Initially, the BFA released some documents, but did not release the redacted Settlement Agreements until July 11.
During those months, the BFA said the request was under legal review.
In a July 11 letter to the Guild, BFA Executive Director James Key-Wallace said the Right to Know Law exempts the release of confidential, commercial, and financial information.
He said release of the information could cause "substantial harm to the competitive position of the person from whom the information was obtained." Or it could impair the government's ability to obtain necessary information in the future.
"Such information is in question here, and the analysis balances in favor of redaction," he wrote.
Oddly, the BFA decision to hold back the information contrasts with that of a federal government agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
In April, the PBGC disclosed that the Union Leader paid $786,000 to get out of $2.6 million in long-term pension obligations for middle-management and non-Guild workers.
The Guild wants to know how much the Union Leader paid to exhaust its responsibilities to two union-backed pension funds, the Communications Workers of America-International Typographical Union Negotiated Pension Plan (CWA-ITU) and the Graphic Communications International Union Retirement Fund (GCIU).
Those pension plans benefited unionized workers at the Union Leader before the company downsized and eliminated entire departments.
The NewsGuild International Pension Plan, which benefits Guild members, is in good standing and is not part of the bailout.

06/23/2025

NH NewsGuild is proud to be a sponsor of this event. Get your free tickets by hitting the QR code.

05/17/2025

Who is mystery UL exec? Where is the no body?

A retired Union Leader executive is apparently out there somewhere and isn't getting a pension check that the person has a right to.
That's according to documents the NH NewsGuild received from a public records request filed with the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority. Late last year, the authority arranged a $2 million bailout of the company.
Under terms of the bailout, the company sought signed acknowledgements from 10 executives who are recipients of the Union Leader Supplemental Retirement Plan.
One of the 10 couldn't be found, and the person wasn't collecting a pension as of last November, according to an email sent by Union Leader Executive Vice President Joyce Levesque to the BFA.
"I have sent word they are eligible for this benefit but only hear crickets relating to the situation," Levesque wrote in the email. In her email, Levesque used the gender-vague pronoun "they" when she referred to the mystery person.
Company-hired actuaries searched also, but only found the one address the Union Leader had.
The executive pension plan is the only one of four plans that did not receive funding in the bail out. The Union Leader is responsible for all future payments. Under terms of the deal, recipients saw their pension checks slashed by 65%.

05/09/2025

Lots of support recently for the NH NewsGuild in social media posts on the Union Leader Facebook and X feeds. 💓💓 To all those showing their support.

04/11/2025

Union Leader gets a deal from feds ...
UL pays $786,200 to erase $2.6 million in pension liabilities

The federal government is now responsible for paying out the pensions for middle-management Union Leader retirees, a liability valued at $2.6 million, according to documents obtained by the NH NewsGuild.
Released this week, the documents detail the tab that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, an arm of the federal government, will pay as part of the multi-faceted bailout of the Union Leader.
Under terms of the deal, the Union Leader pays the PBGC $786,200, which in turn takes over liabilities of the Union Leader Pension Plan, one of three pension plans rescued in the bailout.
As of 2022, 22 retirees were receiving benefits under The Pension Plan; another six are working at the company and will receive benefits eventually. The company launched the Pension Plan in 1990 to cover non-union workers who were not part of the executive team; the company froze the plan in 2008.
(Executives and vice presidents are part of a separate pension plan that the Union Leader retains control of.)
The Union Leader has said that pension obligations have threatened the company's existence, and the debt must be addressed if the company is to have a secure financial future.
The details of the Pension Plan paint a picture of the largesse that eventually imperiled the company.
Pension Plan participants who worked at the company for 25 years receive a pension equal to 45% of the average of their three highest years of compensation. The benefit is so generous that language in the Pension Plan documents limits the maximum pension to $160,000.
Last December, the Union Leader raised $2 million in capital, half from private investors and half from a state-provided, low-interest loan. The bailout capital will be used to pay off the pension obligations, including obligations to two unions that no longer represent workers at the Union Leader.
The bailout does not include the pension plan associated with The NewsGuild. That plan is on solid financial footing, and The Union Leader has no long-term liabilities associated with the Guild pension.
The information on the PBGC rescue of the Union Leader Pension Plan was obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the NH NewsGuild. A future release is expected to spell out the rescues of the union pension plans.

04/08/2025

Great letter from the New Hampshire Faith & Labor Alliance to the new investors of the Union Leader Corporation.
"(W)e wish to convey our urgent request and hope that, as a key part of the
ownership team, you will bring a new round of respect for the company’s workers, who are the
lifeblood of the publication."

04/03/2025

Who needs a bailout?
We need a bailout.
NH NewsGuild and friends outside the Union Leader offices on Tuesday.

03/31/2025

Defections abound at the Union Leader

Veteran Union Leader reporter Mike Cousineau exited the Union Leader earlier this month, taking 35 years of reporting experience and institutional knowledge out the door.
Over the past several years, Mike, the former president of our Guild local, has been named both statewide and New England Region journalist of the year. He has covered city hall, politics and business. He anchored a two-year long "What's Working" effort that addressed labor-related issues in New Hampshire.
He excelled as a Guild leader. He led the Guild through the Covid-19 pandemic, pandemic-related layoffs and 15 months of bargaining that the company torpedoed when it imposed conditions in February 2024.
He was always ready to advocate for a member, carry a sign and confront the company over contract violations.
Mike is one of several career-minded Union Leader workers who have left the Union Leader since management forced a benefit-cutting, dictatorial set of conditions on the Guild.
Mike, reporter Shawne Whickham and ad sales consultant Bob Flynn were either at or near retirement age. They were top performers, healthy and dedicated to their profession.
Many companies strive to keep veteran employees past their retirement age because of their experience, knowledge and talents.
Not the Union Leader.
Also, it appears the Union Leader has no clear plan to replace its talent. It has yet to advertise for Shawne's replacement, even though she left nearly four months ago.
And for weeks, the Union Leader has run ads for an ad sales consultant. The advertisement includes the deceptive claims that benefits include dental, vision and life insurance. Surprisingly, they don't mention a great perk for anyone who wants a career at the Union Leader -- the Guild pension.