Chicago Sun-Times lays off entire photo staff; union responds
CHICAGO The union representing laid-off photographers at the Chicago Sun-Times plans to file a bad-faith bargaining charge with the National Labor Relations Board.
Chicago Newspaper Guild Executive Director Craig Rosenbaum says the charge will be filed in reaction to the Sun-Times Media company's announcement Thursday that it's laying off its entire full-time photography staff.
Rosenbaum says the union is negotiating a new contract and the company told the union at the bargaining table that no layoffs of photographers were planned.
Sun-Times Media released a statement Thursday to The Associated Press confirming "the very difficult decision" to do away with the positions at the city's tabloid newspaper and its suburban sister publications.
The statement noted that the "business is changing rapidly" and audiences are "seeking more video content with their news."
The newspaper company's statement cited its efforts to bolster reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements and said the resulting restructuring of multimedia goes "across the network."
Steve Buyansky, a photo editor for three of the group's suburban newspapers, says about 30 photographers heard from Sun-Times editor Jim Kirk that they were laid off at a mandatory meeting Thursday morning.
He says the photographers are "in shock."
The Chicago Tribune notes that one of the photographers being laid off is John H. White, who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature photography in 1982.