Managing and resisting workplace reorganization: Labor-management relations in a pre-digital media corporation

Abstract

This article examines how newsworkers resisted workplace reorganization in the pre-digital news industry. It analyzes how and why the Thomson Corporation reorganized the workplace and unions resisted workplace change from 1994 to 1995 as a case study of corporate control and worker resistance. Developing the concept of alternative communication resistance practices, it conducts a thematic analysis of untapped archival documents: union, company, legal, and news content. This concept articulates historically-contingent institutional conditions that facilitate corporate strategies to reorganize the workplace and union resistance practices. This article contributes an original relational framework to understand what is distinct about workplace reorganization at a particular setting. It considers workplace actors’ heterogeneous resistance practices within a specific workplace context and how communication practices express and constitute resistance. The article outlines five propositions of this framework that could be tested and potentially refined beyond a single case study in future (digital) journalism research.

Thomson Reuters Corporation, which today operates the Reuters news agency, was derived directly from Canadian-based Thomson Corporation. In 1993, just before online journalism exploded, Thomson restructured its newspapers into regionally based Strategic Marketing Groups (SMGs) to reduce organizational spending and further automated the news production process (Thomson Corporation, 2000b). SMGs enabled Thomson to share marketing and operating resources across the company “to exploit revenue opportunities” (Thomson Corporation, 1996: 26). Within its Island Newspaper Group, Thomson closed the Vancouver Island-based Comox District Free Press in 1994. Due to such workplace reorganization, the workers’ unions had gone on strike—the Victoria Vancouver Island Newspaper Guild (VVING)-The News Guild (TNG) and the Graphic Communications International Union (GCIU) local branch—reducing workers’ protections and shrinking the workforce. Workers launched an autonomous strike newspaper and took legal action against the company.

As a case study of management reorganization and union resistance, this article examines unions’ resistance practices to workplace reorganization at Thomson’s Free Press in the pre-digital news industry, conducting a thematic analysis of archival documents: union, company, legal, and news content. It is grounded in political economy of communication, historical institutionalism, critical organizational communication, and social movement studies. It advances a novel conceptual framework to study workplace reorganization, developing a relational model of corporate strategies of workplace organization and alternative communication resistance practices. The article seeks an alternative historical interpretation to understanding news workplace reorganization, rather than reducing it mainly to management control over introducing new technology and influences of state institutions and policy (Marjoribanks, 2000b), or a “unitary” notion of worker resistance (Pal and Dutta, 2008: 54). To understand what is distinct about the process of workplace reorganization at a particular setting and what might be common across settings, I argue that we should also consider workplace actors’ heterogeneous resistance practices within a specific workplace context and how communication practices express and constitute resistance.

To better understand contemporary conditions, more journalism history research is necessary that foregrounds union-management relations, newsworkers whose labor contributes to the (re)development of news companies, and unions’ communication practices that have shaped organizational restructuring. For Nerone (2022: 31), “Making news is work. Therefore, the history of news should be in part a labor history.” Conversely, a labor history of the Free Press could illuminate how Thomson’s future was shaped in part by the company’s labor-management relations at its print newspapers. When some regional markets did not provide Thomson with its anticipated growth potential in the 1990s, the company planned to divest its remaining unprofitable newspapers, creating a “New Media Ventures” group to explore digital strategies (Thomson Corporation, 1996, 1997). My article has further significance due to interest in union organizing in contemporary studies of digital journalism, introduction of digital technologies into newsrooms, and effects of media ownership concentration on working conditions (Cohen, 2019; Cohen and de Peuter, 2020; Petre, 2018; Proffitt, 2021; Salamon, 2022a, 2022b). To understand contemporary journalism, we need to examine its history and the workers who make this history, accounting for how rank-and-file newsworkers are at the mercy of “capital and technology, which encroach on their independence and produce conditions of precarity and exploitation” (Nerone, 2022: 32). This article provides a framework that researchers could test in current contexts, determining lessons for understanding continuities and discontinuities in the digital journalism workplace.

This article has two research questions: RQ1: How and why did management of the Thomson-owned Comox Daily Free Press reorganize and control the workplace in a context of emerging digital transformation? RQ2: How did the Free Press unions characterize their resistance practices to organizational change? Next, this article reviews literature on corporate strategies of news workplace reorganization and forms of union resistance in political economy and historical institutionalism and alternative communication practices in social movement studies and critical organizational communication. It builds a historically-grounded relational conceptual framework, fusing together actors’ practices to organize and resist workplace reorganization. It then analyzes archival documents by and about Thomson and the Free Press unions. The discussion and conclusion outlines propositions of this relational conceptual framework that could be tested and potentially refined beyond a single case study in future research.

Literature review

Corporate strategies and union resistance to news workplace reorganization

This subsection critically assesses literature on news workplace reorganization, providing a way to understand the relationship among corporate strategies of control and union resistance. Political economists suggest that news companies operate in monopolistic or oligopolistic market structures with ownership concentration. For some researchers, concentration varies at national and local levels (Noam, 2009; Winseck, 2016). At the meso level, news companies are primarily owner-controlled or management controlled (Murdock, 1982). Corporate control operates at the allocative level (overall and long-term strategies guided by a company’s owners) and operational level (day-to-day decisions already decided at the allocative level and carried out by management and editors).

To determine how news companies might control newsworkers, company power operates along economic and political axes (Birkinbine et al., 2016). Regarding economic power, companies have adopted the strategy of conglomeration, forming chains and sharing resources. Some chains have implemented the strategy of clustering, reorganizing their newspapers into regional “SMGs” of several newspapers, while divesting newspapers that fail to fit into their geographically defined regions (Hendriks, 1999: 118). Clustering centralizes important business activities, including financial reporting, database marketing, and news production. News companies have also formed interlocking relationships and strategic alliances among the corporate elite (Birkinbine et al., 2016). Regarding political power, companies have mobilized state actors and leveraged policies to their benefit. As critical political economists view North American journalism as a public good and democratic institution, they conclude that the potential power of chain ownership control puts at risk journalism’s public service mission and role as a watchdog over powerful institutions (Pickard, 2020).

Conversely, critical political economists have foregrounded newsworker unions’ resistance tactics vis-à-vis workplace reorganization (Cohen and De Peuter, 2020; Proffitt, 2021). Due to the introduction of digital technologies and workplace reorganization since the 1960s, newsworker unions have merged across the industry, converging to strengthen their bargaining power (McKercher, 2002). Analyzing digital newsworkers’ union mobilizing since 2015, Cohen and De Peuter (2020) incorporate a communicative constitution of organization (CCO) perspective. The CCO illustrates that “communication is the stuff of mobilizing” (Cohen and De Peuter, 2020: 27), including unions’ face-to-face conversations, digitally-networked mobilizing (e.g., public letters to management and social media expressions of solidarity between newsworkers and their publics). Newsworker unions also express their resistance struggles through such “public relations activities” in print (e.g., flyers, pamphlets, mimeographed bulletins, and leaflets) (Brennen, 2005: 67), while temporarily converging by mobilizing massive community support, for instance, during strikes (Salamon, 2018b). However, this literature only partially addresses the communicative nature of resistance. While some political economists foreground macro and meso-level corporate strategies, others consider meso-level union resistance tactics across the industry. We still need a relational approach sensitive to the distinct process of workplace reorganization at a particular setting and that brings together management perspectives, union perspectives, and micro-level structures of signification where resistance is communicated in documentary evidence.

Historical institutionalists consider constraints of institutional, political-economic, and social-historical contexts and workplace actors’ agency (Marjoribanks, 2000a, 2000b, 2003). They integrate labor process theory and the institutional social choice model, moving beyond class and economic determinism in Marxist approaches to critical political economy by acknowledging actors’ prior and unfolding situation. To understand workplace reorganization, historical institutionalists “examine the balance of force and consent in the shopfloor relations of workers among themselves, and in their relations with management” (Marjoribanks, 2000b: 19). For Marjoribanks (2000a, 2000b, 2003), the capitalist-owner and managerial classes control processes of introducing new technologies into a workplace, but newsworker unions actively consent or resist technological change. Under post-Fordism, individuals still choose this computerized journalistic work, with long hours, constant deadlines, and relatively low pay to get more control over the labor process. Additionally, state policies, policy decisions, and political actors’ struggles enable or constrain technological innovation and workplace reorganization. Finally, technological change and workplace reorganization impact power relations between institutions and actors, leading to multiskilling, deskilling, reskilling, and/or outsourcing of newsworkers’ labor, while tightening or weakening the capitalist class’s monopoly power.

Thus, unions are representative of a relational view of class formation: editorial workers’ unions do not exist without the managerial and capitalist classes and vice versa, but they are also a class with distinct interests in relation to technical workers’ unions. Viewed as a “relationship, social class refers to the connections among people based on their location with respect to the primary processes of social production and reproduction” and the mutual dependence of classes (Mosco, 2009: 189). For Marjoribanks (2003: 61), “While [journalists] have organized in unions, on an individual basis they have also seen themselves as professionals who have at times resented and actively opposed the capacity of print workers to stop production.” O’Donnell (2022: 71) contends that historical institutionalism’s relational model “exemplifies the contingency of union power in recent media industry transformation.” However, historical institutionalists minimize newsworker unions’ strategic organizing beyond negotiations over technological change. They also downplay unions’ different communication practices that express and constitute resistance.

Newsworker unions’ alternative communication resistance practices

This subsection establishes two interrelated features of alternative communication resistance practices: first, the multifaceted ways unions strategically organize, and second, communication practices that express and constitute resistance. Resistance includes “action” responding to or defending against “domination, exploitation, subjection at the material, symbolic, or psychological level” (Routledge, 1997: 69). Organizational resistance includes the practice of insurrection: collective and “public forms of macro-resistance” that establish union organizing (Mumby et al., 2017: 1170). Insurrection manifests in various forms, depending on actors’ choices within specific workplace and socio-political contexts and historically-contingent power relations.

I assert that unions’ different collective insurrection resistance practices are expressed in and constituted by alternative communication practices. Such practices bring together “[workers’] forms of communication” and “cultural phenomena with [workers’] experience of struggle” (Mattelart, 1980: xviii). They include direct action, actions aimed at mainstream media, and alternative journalism. Direct action articulates how social movement actors, including newsworker unions, take “direct control of communication,” for instance, strikes, occupations, or takeovers of media companies (Raboy, 1984: 64). Actions aimed at mainstream media include “demystifying the media through critical ‘exposés” and “reform struggles” in flyers, pamphlets, mimeographed bulletins, and leaflets (Raboy, 1984: 126) and in online formats (Mumby et al., 2017; Salamon, 2022b).

Finally, alternative journalism includes forms of communication that social movement actors use in their reform struggles to influence progressive social change in a corporate and profit-driven political economy of journalism (Raboy, 1984). Alternative and mainstream journalism can overlap, converge, have similar characteristics, exist on a continuum, and be driven by left-wing or right-wing ideologies. Holt et al. (2019: 865) outline different levels and multiple positions of alternativeness on such a continuum (but not necessary simultaneously) to constitute journalistic products or processes as alternative: micro (“content producers” and “content & style”); meso (“publishing routines” and “media organization”); and macro (“alternative media’s function and impact on the societal structure”). Alternative journalism is situated within unique historical, sociocultural, and political contexts.

Strike-born newspapers are an example genre of alternative journalism that unions have produced and circulated to organize resistance since the 19th century (Guimary, 1969; Salamon, 2018a). They typically have six features. First, newsworkers launch them to compete with and put pressure on their employers to resolve strikes. Second, strike-born publications could fill gaps in local news coverage and fulfill journalism’s public service mission. Third, they are often short-lived due to financial constraints and the time-limited nature of labor conflicts. Fourth, unions tend to finance them. Fifth, strike-born newspapers rely on local community members to buy advertising and regularly read them. Sixth, strike-born newspapers tend to remunerate workers with—or to supplement—strike pay. I contend that the relational view of class formation mentioned earlier is revealed through alternative communication practices (Marjoribanks, 2000b). I bring to bear this relational framework to examine workplace reorganization, considering corporate strategies at Thomson’s Free Press and ways that unions’ alternative communication practices express and constitute heterogeneous resistance practices.

Method

Guided by the relational model (Marjoribanks, 2000b), this section first briefly outlines this study’s specific institutional, political-economic, and social-historical context: Thomson Newspapers’ market share, the structure of Canada’s Comox Valley news market, and Canada’s and TNG’s unionization rates in the 1980s and 1990s. It then outlines this study’s research design, data collection, and data analysis approach. Between 1984 and 1992, Thomson Newspapers was among the big three newspaper chains in Canada, consistently securing 20.5% of national market share and publishing more than 200 daily and weekly newspapers in North America (Thomson Corporation, 1991; Winseck, 2016). During its 1993 contract negotiations, the Free Press had limited local media competition in the Comox Valley. Its major print media competitor was Black Island Publishers’ Courtenay Comox Valley Record, the region’s second community newspaper (Haluschak, 2011). Comox Valley also had only one local radio station—CFCP 1440 (Canadian Communications Foundation, 2022). This lack of media competition arguably could have made it harder for Thomson to close the Free Press, giving the publication’s unions more leverage.

In 1993, 33.7% of workers in Canada were union members (Statistics Canada, 2018). This figure represented a steady decline from 37.6% in 1981. While North American TNG membership had also decreased from about 36,000 members in 1987 to 32,000 members in 1992, the proportion of Canadian-based TNG members increased from 15% in 1987 to 19.2% in 1993 (McKercher, 2002: 92, 106). Canadian TNG membership was increasing consistently, for instance, from 3,165 in 1966 to 4,000 in 1980 (Hébert, 1981). Thomson editorial workers had also been organizing Canadian newsrooms since 1963 (Salamon, 2018b). Soon after Thomson acquired some publications, newsworkers felt that their working conditions deteriorated in part as the company aimed to automate the production process and eliminate jobs. In 1990, the VVING organized Free Press editorial and office employees, one year after Thomson bought the newspaper (BCLRB, 1995; VVING, 1990). This context suggests that unionization was still a viable strategy for editorial workers.

Next, this article adopts the case study approach and related interpretive research strategy in historical sociology. The case study approach aligns with the relational model of historical institutionalism, acknowledging the need to “proceed on an individual, case-by-case basis, and that workplace transformations are shaped ultimately by the choices of actors in specific workplace contexts” (Marjoribanks, 2003: 65). It also recognizes “constraints imposed by the location of those case studies within a particular social, economic and political configuration” (Marjoribanks, 2000b: 24). Interpretive historical sociologists seek “meaningful interpretations of history,” examining the “culturally embedded intentions of … group actors in the given historical settings under investigation,” while understanding their “significance” in the “present” (Skocpol, 1984: 368)—in this case, within a context of institutional change and continuity in digital journalism workplaces. Researchers may apply these strategies to a single historical case study by briefly presenting orienting concepts as introduced earlier. However, the single-case study interpretive historical approach has limitations: researchers might be unable to identify common developments with single cases and struggle to establish causal validity (Marjoribanks, 2000b; Skocpol, 1984). Yet critical analysis of single case studies by historical institutionalists could still “illuminate important general issues” (Thelen, 1999: 373), which researchers could use to form propositions “to test and refine an argument seen as potentially generalizable beyond the single [case]” in future research (Skocpol, 1984: 374).

This study is grounded in an analysis of 84 documents. They include seven Thomson Corporation annual reports from 1991 to 1997, Thomson Corporation’s (2000) self-published history, the British Columbia Labour Relations Board’s (BCLRB, 1995) 50-page Free Press strike decision, and 26 news articles about Thomson Corporation and the VVING published in Canadian newspapers from 1993 to 1995 and archived in ProQuest. They also include 49 documents in the VVING’s restricted archive. To gain access, a personal contact from another media union local connected me with the VVING president, who loaned me a thirty-pound box of documents regarding the VVING’s history and granted me permission to use these documents. I used documents on the 1994–1995 collective bargaining negotiations and Free Press strike: seven union pamphlets, information sheets, and all 42 issues of the strike-born newspaper the Independent, ranging from 20 to 40 pages each.

I conduct a “theoretical” thematic analysis of these documents at the “latent level” (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 84), identifying practices that shape workplace reorganization and union resistance. After reading through the documents, I hand coded them. This approach led to two themes, the first of which had two subthemes, while the second had three subthemes. The first theme is framed by the “relational model” of workplace organization and labor-management relations (Marjoribanks, 2000b). I examine each document to reveal corporate strategies (theme one) shaping workplace reorganization: operating structure change and technological innovation (subthemes). The second theme is framed by the notion of “public forms of macro-resistance” (Mumby et al., 2017: 1170). I study each document to uncover expressions of alternative communication practices (theme two) shaping unions’ resistance: direct action; legal action; and alternative journalism (subthemes).

Findings

Management and labor reorganize the news workplace

Operating structure change

This subsection is focused on the first corporate strategy of Free Press workplace reorganization: newspaper operating structure change. It is framed by the notion of clustering (Hendriks, 1999). As the Web was becoming commercialized, Thomson intended to reorganize its daily newspapers, converting them into regional marketing companies, the core products of which would be newspapers. In 1993, the company created “strategic operating clusters” (Thomson Corporation, 1994: 17) or “SMGs to focus on specific regional marketplaces” (Thomson Corporation, 1996: 26). These clusters were “structured to promote natural marketing synergies [and] operating efficiencies. The new groups are essentially stand-alone operations, and a minimal corporate office [would] provide expertise only on matters such as human resources and industrial relations, purchasing, financial management, technology and law” (Thomson Corporation, 1994: 17). Regional clustering was becoming a broader phenomenon in the newspaper industry. For Noam (2009: 139), “local papers” were becoming “regional papers,” marking a shift from the “previous acquisition strategy of nationally scattered chains.” Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley is one region where Thomson experimented with SMGs—the Vancouver Island Newspaper Group—leveraging its expertise in industrial relations (BCLRB, 1995). As Hendriks (1999: 118) puts it, “One of the benefits of restructuring the company in this way has the been the appointment of regional resource people that the individual newspapers could not afford before.”

Technological innovation

This subsection is focused on the second corporate strategy of Free Press workplace reorganization: technological innovation. News companies implement this strategy by introducing new technologies into the workplace and automating the news production process (Marjoribanks, 2000b; McKercher, 2002). Thomson planned to automate more of the production process, intensifying the GCIU’s concerns when it started negotiating for a new agreement in August 1994 (BCLRB, 1995; VVING, 1994a). Thomson planned to eliminate old prepress production equipment that relied on cutting and pasting techniques and laying out articles by hand (BCLRB, 1995; Casselton, 1994b, 1994c). It was part of the Thomson Corporation’s (1995: 28) strategy of improving “editorial effectiveness and operational efficiency,” increasing its “use of state-of-the-art electronic pagination systems.” However, the new equipment would have led the company to cut jobs and rely on deskilled labor, which was the outcome when other news companies automated the production process. Newspapers adopted different plans regarding technological change between the 1960s and 1990s, but they mostly “ended up at more or less the same place: with production plants in which the dominant technology is digital, and in which the multiple steps between editor’s desk and mailroom have been collapsed and, ultimately, eliminated” (McKercher, 2002: 44–45).

The GCIU was still ready to support Thomson’s drive to automate the Free Press (BCLRB, 1995). As with news unions elsewhere, it had been making concessions regarding automation since the 1960s (Marjoribanks, 2000b; McKercher, 2002). If the Free Press introduced such computerized technology, the outcome might have been comparable to other newspaper workplaces. For Marjoribanks (2003: 69), “Wherever such systems were introduced, there … occurred a fundamental reorganization in the types of skills required to produce the newspaper. Almost overnight, there was at least the potential to remove pre-existing job demarcations based on factors such as craft specialization.” Such reorganization has given management more flexibility, while requiring employees to be multiskilled. Thomson could potentially “direct the processes of technological innovation and workplace reorganization, while also weakening the capacity of the unions to influence events” (Marjoribanks, 2000a: 590). McKercher (2002: 52) contends that technological transformation of the production process can ultimately facilitate a “capitalist ideal: the domination of ‘living labor’ by ‘dead labor,’ or the skills and knowledge of workers by automation.” Together, these factors shaped unions’ collective resistance practices to resist workplace reorganization.

Newsworker unions resist change

Taking direct action

This subsection is centered on the unions’ first alternative communication resistance practice: taking direct action. Framed by the strike as an insurrectionary practice of direct action including pickets aimed at gaining worker control (Mumby et al., 2017; Raboy, 1984), it considers how unions initially took direct action to resist management’s reorganization plans. Talks broke off between the VVING and the company after negotiations in March 1994 (BCLRB, 1995; VVING, 1994b). To publicly express their resistance, Free Press workers started their strike by picketing on July 21. The GCIU formally joined the strike on August 8, affecting 124 workers—39 VVING and 85 GCIU members (BCLRB, 1995; VVING, 1994a). Free Press newsworkers rejected the company’s offer because the company clawed back workers’ protections, neglecting many concerns, for instance, intending to remove job security and employment protections for part-time staff (TNG, 1994). The VVING called it an “unlimited part-time ghetto” (VVING, 1994c) that would “create a new class of working poor” (TNG, 1994). The company also proposed to lay off employees without just cause if “necessary to reduce the workforce” (CDFP, 1994). The newsworkers emphasized that the company’s final offer was “contrary to the basic tenets of trade unionism” (“We’re Off,” 1994).

To potentially increase the effectiveness of their direct action, the Free Press unions mobilized community support, like other unions have done historically (Salamon, 2018b). While management and replacement workers continued publishing the Free Press during the strike (BCLRB, 1995; Gidney, 1994a, 1994b), other workers supported the strikers. Before joining the strike, GCIU members refused to cross VVING’s picket line. Additionally, the Campbell River and District Labor Council organized a rally in front of the Free Press building (Smith, 1994). Members of eight unions, including nearby Victoria Times Colonist staff, participated.

However, management attempted to minimize the effectiveness of such direct action, leveraging the prevailing historically-developed power and social relations due to its location with respect to the process of capitalist social production (Marjoribanks, 2000b; Mosco, 2009). On August 16, 1994, Publisher and General Manager George Le Masurier announced that the Free Press would close, a decision made at the Thomson corporate level, claiming that the newspaper had lost revenue that it could not regain (BCLRB, 1995). Mike Bocking, Canadian Director of TNG, insisted that the Free Press closure was part of Thomson’s aggressive “continental labor strategy” to deal with unions (quoted in Casselton, 1994a). Additionally, Le Masurier said that a disagreement over the introduction of new technology became a barrier to settling the strike (Canadian Press, 1994a). This period was marked by corporate anti-unionism and automation of workplaces in and beyond the news industry (Marjoribanks, 2000b; McKercher, 2002). The state and companies had “created a context in which corporate managers could act to diminish or even remove the influence of unions from the workplace” (Marjoribanks, 2003: 71).

Taking legal action

This subsection is focused on the unions’ second alternative communication resistance practice: taking legal action. It understands the BCLRB (1995) decision as communicative evidence of action aimed at critically “demystifying” mainstream media, articulating Free Press labor-management “reform struggles” (Raboy, 1984: 126), and organizing collective union power (Salamon, 2018b). It considers how the GCIU and VVING resisted the Free Press closure, filing legal complaints to the BCLRB. The GCIU filed its complaint on August 19, 1994, delaying the newspaper’s official closure until March 1995 (BCLRB, 1995; Canadian Press, 1995; Paradice, 1995). The GCIU accused the company of conducting unfair labor practices, locking out the employees illegally, and failing to bargain in good faith (Smith, 1995). The Free Press closure had allegedly violated sections of the province’s Labor Relations Code, and “committed unfair labor practices by giving notice that it would permanently close on August 19, 1994 and terminate all employees” (BCLRB, 1995: 2). The GCIU claimed that the company failed to raise the closure and its ramifications at the bargaining table and “failed to give notice and negotiate about the closure” (BCLRB, 1995: 2).

The VVING also filed a BCLRB complaint but consolidated its application with the GCIU to leverage their collective power, demonstrating how unions can use temporary labor convergence as a short-term legal resistance tactic (Salamon, 2018b). The VVING asserted that the company was using replacement workers to publish the Wrap newspaper at its Courier Island Division as a “substitute paper” for the North Island News after the company closed it (BCLRB, 1995: 3–4). The union alleged that struck work had been moved to a secondary Courier Island location in Campbell River to produce the Wrap. Thus, the VVING sought the right to picket there. Both unions claimed that Thomson closed the Free Press to reform its Island Group operations, establishing a new newspaper in the region, while avoiding collective bargaining (BCLRB, 1995). Accordingly, Thomson would be able to secure more flexible employment terms and arrangements, which was characteristic of post-Fordist labor relations at the time (Marjoribanks, 2000b).

Finally, on March 3, 1995, the BCLRB (1995) released a decision regarding the Free Press closure, rejecting the unions’ complaints. The Board accepted the company’s defense that the labor conflict had caused “irreparable damage” to the Free Press and that the newspaper had lost advertising revenues to the Record (BCLRB, 1995: 19). The BCLRB (1995: 37) concluded that the Free Press closed due to the newspaper's economic state before the strike (i.e., relatively low profit margins), the economic downturn during the labor conflict (i.e., lost advertising revenues of $250,000), and anticipated post-conflict effects on the newspaper. The BCLRB (1995: 50) also determined that the Free Press gave sufficient notice to the unions regarding the closure, and the company “met the minimal requirements to bargain in good faith.” The decision allowed Thomson to legally close the Free Press (Canadian Press, 1995; Paradice, 1995; Smith, 1995). The newsworkers ended their picket lines on March 13, 1995, while Thomson could recover its assets. At the time, news workplace reorganization had resulted in labor disputes elsewhere, with varying degrees of success, but they typically ended similarly with unions losing at least some bargaining power (Marjoribanks, 2000b).

Publishing alternative journalism

This subsection is focused on the unions’ third alternative communication resistance practice: alternative journalism. Framed by the six characteristics of strike-born newspapers (Guimary, 1969) and the alternativeness of journalism at macro, meso, and micro levels (Holt et al., 2019), it considers the weekly strike-born newspaper the Independent. The unions launched the Independent on September 1, 1994 to put pressure on management (Casselton, 1994a). This function and potential societal influence—typical of a strike-born newspaper (Guimary, 1969)—establishes the alternativeness of the Independent at the macro level (Holt et al., 2019).

The Independent was also alternative at the meso level in terms of its funding, media organizational structure, and distribution process. For start-up funding, the VVING provided an interest-free $30,000 loan, like previous union-funded strike-born newspapers (Guimary, 1969). The Free Press unions could rent office space and purchase eight computers, a laser printer, and a printing press (Canadian Press, 1994b; Goldberg, 1994; Young, 1994). Initially free, the Independent cost 50 cents by the third issue. In addition to subscriptions, the Independent sold classified ads, like in mainstream media, demonstrating a “boundary struggle” between mainstream and alternative journalism (Holt et al., 2019: 865). As owner and publisher, the VVING assisted the strikers in distributing between 8,000 and 14,000 copies every Thursday to local homes and businesses but regularly posted ads calling for news carriers (Zeidler, 1994).

At the micro-level of content producer employment, news style, and content, the Independent was guided by both familiar professional and alternative news values, illuminating more boundary struggles between mainstream and alternative journalism (Holt et al., 2019). The Independent employed the striking professional newsworkers, but they earned $200 per week in strike pay to work on the newspaper (Cleverley, 1994), like other strike-born newsworkers (Guimary, 1969). In terms of style, the Independent would “present fair, balanced and accurate news stories about the Comox Valley and the surrounding area” (Zeidler, 1994). Yet the newspaper was alternative because it also aimed to educate, be a “progressive voice in the community,” and be “different” (“Turn Out,” 1995).

Additionally, the Independent was an alternative platform for unions to fill a gap in local community news content, voice discontent, and cover mainstream journalism trends, like other strike-born newspapers had done (Guimary, 1969). After Thomson decided to close the Free Press, for example, the Independent reported that Thomson had launched a newspaper on Vancouver Island and closed another historic publication. The Parksville/Qualicum Beach News and the Arrowsmith Star merged, signaling “another chapter in the saga of the 1990s super-corporation wave that is transforming the employment landscape as we know it” (“Thomson Opens,” 1994). The Independent also covered the 1994 closure of the Thomson-owned Oshawa Times, which an article called “a case of déjà vu” (“Thomson Shuts Down,” 1994). Nevertheless, the Independent reveals another boundary struggle between mainstream and alternative journalism. The editorial side was focused on traditional local and community news (Zeidler, 1994). The Independent also included typical sections on local theatre, film, and restaurant reviews, sports and recreation, the environment, food, personal finance, a women’s section, television listings, classified ads, a community calendar of events, and directory of local organizations and services.

The Independent still countered mainstream news coverage of the strike. It took the “opportunity to present the other, untold side”: GCIU Free Press member Peter Reid (1995) wrote that most coverage of the labor conflict was focused on Thomson and the VVING after the corporation purchased the Free Press. However, most of the affected employees were arguably GCIU members. Conversely, the VVING wrote, “Thomson, aided by some local media, want you to believe that the strike was over wages …. In reality, the dispute was about principles of employment, not pay. It was about maintaining existing work conditions and basic job security provisions” (“Principles at Stake,” 1995). The union affirmed that it was committed to the newspaper and community and that its demands were reasonable.

Free Press workers also reacted to the BCLRB decision in the Independent, publishing alternative journalism content to resist the corporation beyond the strike’s official end. They emphasized that the ruling “does not state that the company’s offer was just, only that it had taken the necessary legal steps to silence the presses” (“Turning a New Page,” 1995). The VVING rejected Thomson’s contradictory position, highlighting that the Valley Echo was founded by Free Press managers who represented the company in bargaining and claimed that it lost revenue to the Record that it could never recover (“Principles at Stake,” 1995). By creating the new Valley Echo, the union suggested that the company could recover its losses.

Although the BCLRB decision was disappointing for the unions, it provided another resistance opportunity for former Free Press newsworkers to facilitate alternative journalism at the meso-organizational level in terms of media ownership (Holt et al., 2019). The decision “enable[d] us to concentrate fully on the future prospects of the Independent … shedding the dark cloak of strike newspaper status” (“Turning a New Page,” 1995). The Independent would be run by an independent board of directors rather than the union, but it would still be employee-controlled: union members could hold shares in the newly-formed Independent Newspaper Limited Partnership (Young, 1995a, 1995b). The newsworkers continued to operate the strike-born newspaper until June 1995, six months after the Free Press officially closed, but then the Free Press bargaining unit was dissolved, so the Independent was short-lived, like previous strike-born newspapers (Guimary, 1969).

In sum, Thomson reorganized the news workplace in the 1990s. It integrated newspapers like the Free Press into SMGs, while attempting to further automate the labor process to reduce organizational spending and maximize operational efficiency. Free Press unions resisted such workplace organization, launching direct action (picketing), legal action (a complaint to the BCLRB), and alternative journalism (a strike-born newspaper). The BCLRB decided in favor of Thomson, shutting down the Free Press and defeating the unions.

Discussion and conclusion

This article conducted a thematic analysis of archival documents to better understand corporate strategies and union resistance practices regarding workplace reorganization at Thomson’s Free Press. It contributes new knowledge on how Thomson management reorganized and controlled the workplace (RQ1) and how Free Press unions resisted workplace reorganization and control (RQ2). It also contributes a new conceptual framework to examine workplace reorganization, developing a relational model of corporate strategies of workplace organization and alternative communication resistance practices.

Concerning RQ1, the Free Press strike demonstrates how Thomson used operating structure change, establishing SMGs as another way that corporations control labor. Previous research has focused predominately on corporate control vis-à-vis technological innovation, state institutions and policy, ownership concentration, and workplace reorganization of international media conglomerates (Marjoribanks, 2000b; McKercher, 2002; Proffitt, 2021). This case illustrates Thomson’s economic and political power (Birkinbine et al., 2016). It supports a focus on market structures and news ownership patterns, illuminating evidence of Thomson’s external economic power. The Free Press operated in an oligopolistic market structure with ownership concentration at the regional level (Noam, 2009). Thomson’s corporate control also displays evidence of internal economic power over the corporation’s workforce. The findings suggest that Thomson was owner controlled: control operated at the operational and allocative levels (Murdock, 1982). The strike confirms that Free Press management oversaw labor relations at the operational level, rather than at Thomson’s head office in Toronto. However, control still operated at an allocative level: management carried out day-to-day decisions made at head office, mainly the company’s long-term strategic objectives of clustering, implementing SMGs and further automating the labor process (Hendriks, 1999; Marjoribanks, 2000b; McKercher, 2002). The focus on state institutions and policy decisions is also indicative of political power (Marjoribanks, 2000b): the BCLRB decision regarding the Free Press closure in part legitimated Thomson’s control.

Regarding RQ2, resistance at Thomson’s Free Press offers insights into union influence on workplace reorganization (Marjoribanks, 2000b). The strike demonstrates unions’ alternative communication resistance practices: direct action, legal action, and alternative journalism (Raboy, 1984). The focus on workers’ direct action (i.e., picketing) is consistent with previous research (Brennen, 2005; Raboy, 1984; Salamon, 2018a, 2018b). A focus on legal action supports the need to understand it as simultaneously a collective form of macro-resistance and corporate strategy (Marjoribanks, 2000b; Mumby et al., 2017): the unions filed the BCLRB complaint, but the BCLRB’s decision determined the strike’s end, officially closing the newspaper.

Additionally, as a collective and public form of macro-resistance (Mumby et al., 2017), the Independent was part of a genre of alternative journalism, revealing boundary struggles between mainstream and alternative journalism at different levels: micro (content producer employment, news style, and content); meso (funding, media organizational structure, and distribution process); and macro (function and societal impact) (Holt et al., 2019). Nevertheless, the Independent displayed the six characteristics of strike-born newspapers (Guimary, 1969). First, the unions launched the Independent to actively pressure management to settle the strike. Second, the Independent articulated a new voice, publishing alternative hyper-local community information, filling a gap that the Free Press left during the strike, and providing a community service. Third, it was short-lived due to the BCLRB’s decision that ended the strike, closing the Free Press. Fourth, the Independent was union financed. Fifth, the Independent depended on local businesses to advertise and community members to subscribe. Finally, striking newsworkers received strike pay for contributing to the Independent. However, the research suggests that we adopt a new characteristic of strike newspapers: by putting pressure on management, we can also understand strike newspapers as an extension of the picket line and form of direct action beyond the geographically-limited space of the traditional picket line.

These documentary materials express and constitute unions’ alternative communication resistance practices (Cohen and De Peuter, 2020). They bring together “forms of communication” and “cultural phenomena with [workers’] experience of struggle” (Mattelart, 1980: xviii). They also articulate the relational view of class formation mentioned earlier (Marjoribanks, 2003; Mosco, 2009). For instance, the GCIU positioned itself against the VVING in the Independent and was delayed in joining the strike. Thus, the technical workers’ union was a class with distinct interests in relation to the editorial workers’ union and the managerial class based on their location with regard to the processes of capitalist social production and reproduction. Additionally, the VVING maintained that the company’s offer would create “a new class of working poor” (TNG, 1994), suggesting that we should recognize variations in the interests of class-based actors, including unions, within specific workplace contexts over time and location (Marjoribanks, 2000b).

Overall, this article develops a novel conceptual framework based on a relational model of corporate workplace organization and alternative communication resistance practices, suggesting the following propositions for studying workplace reorganization that could be tested and potentially refined in future research:

1. The owner and management control the relationship between the initial introduction of corporate strategies (e.g., operating structure change and technological innovation) and workplace reorganization due to their access to economic resources, political resources, and location with respect to processes of capitalist social production and reproduction.

2. Workplace reorganization associated with the introduction and outcome of corporate strategies is developed in interactions among the owner, management, unions, and the state, which are communicatively expressed and constituted in actors’ documentary evidence.

3. Representing the workforce, unions still influence corporate strategies and processes of workplace reorganization through their collective capacity to enact alternative communication resistance practices (e.g., direct action, legal action, and alternative journalism).

4. State and legal institutions, including administrative tribunals (e.g., labor relations boards), may influence corporate strategies through processes that facilitate or constrain owner, management, and union actions (e.g., legal decisions).

5. The introduction of corporate strategies and outcomes are still shaped by the historically developed and developing relations among the capitalist-owner, management, unions, and the state, and their location within a particular institutional, political-economic, and social-historical context.

This framework provides an alternative historical approach to understanding news workplace reorganization. It considers broader political and economic corporate strategies (Birkinbine et al., 2016), rather than only impacts of new technology, the state, or policy (Marjoribanks, 2000b). Moving beyond a unitary understanding of resistance (Pal and Dutta, 2008), this framework also establishes a heterogeneous conception of organizational resistance practices (Mumby et al., 2017). It advances the concept of alternative communication resistance practices (Mattelart, 1980; Raboy, 1984), recognizing the communicative expression and constitution of such organizational resistance practices (Cohen and De Peuter, 2020).

Researchers could address this article’s limitations in future research. This article was based on one case study, tracing a journalism labor history of unions’ resistance practices at one company. Future comparative research could consider unions’ alternative communication resistance practices at other companies, in different national and regional contexts, and over time. There is also an opportunity to test this relational framework to examine workplace reorganization in digital journalism workplaces in a context in which we have witnessed ongoing changes in workplace relations, and the roles of owners, management, unions, and the state (Cohen, 2019; O’Donnell, 2022; Petre, 2018; Pickard, 2020; Salamon, 2022a). Additionally, researchers could study online strike newspapers as a new form of e-resistance (Mumby et al., 2017), like the Pittsburgh Union Progress, which striking TNG members at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette launched in October 2022 (Axelrod, 2022). Beyond unions, future studies could examine alternative communication resistance practices of other workers’ collective organizations, including newsworkers’ professional associations and temporary associations (Salamon, 2018b). By building an original conceptual framework to study workplace reorganization, researchers could better understand news labor-management relations, newsworkers whose labor contributes to the (re)development of companies, and newsworkers’ alternative communication resistance practices that shape rapidly-changing workplaces.