Former LBPost Employees Protest Layoffs Amid Allegations of Union Retaliation and Mismanagement

By Daniel Rivera, Labor Reporter 
On Monday morning (March 25), the former employees from the Long Beach Post were protesting their layoffs at the intersection of Pine Avenue and West Broadway not long after the LBPost went nonprofit in October 2023. 

The LBPost is reportedly experiencing budget shortfalls due to missing out on a large donation from investment firm Pacific6, the previous owner of the local news outlet. The employees, however,  see their layoffs as retaliation in part due to their efforts for unionization.

“We are the Long Beach Media Guild. We all came together and signed union authorization cards and waited for authorization and voluntary recognition,” said Jason Ruiz, a LBPost reporter who had avoided being laid off but chose to march in solidarity with the laid-off employees. 

Ruiz explained that the Long Beach Journalism Initiative Management, which runs both the Business Journal and the Post has, up to this point, refused to recognize the guild or consider any of its budget proposals, including pay cuts that the employees had agreed to as a part of an alternate budget. 

“We have come together and agreed to self-imposed pay reductions that would fit under the budget that they just created with nine layoffs, but the board and CEO have refused to meet with us to talk about that plan that can save jobs.” 

Melissa Evans, in a follow-up interview, explained that the request was recent and that they have been slow to react not only to the guild but also to its contract. And with the majority of the Post’s workforce belonging to a union, 14 out of 16 staff positions,  it was inevitable that unionizing employees would be fired. 

“In reality, staff were made aware that layoffs were inevitable before they moved to unionize” and “they notified the board that 14 people signed union cards and we were told to immediately recognize the union. We had 24 hours to make that decision., We just can’t make a decision that fast.”

The Guild has also submitted a complaint to the labor board alleging that the layoffs of  Kat Schuster and Branden Richardson were due to their unionization efforts.  LBPost’s chief executive officer, Melissa Evans, claimed in a public letter announced it was downsizing due to its financial woes. 

“At the end of February, I informed the staff that our operational cash was so low that we would soon have to make significant cuts to personnel, which make up 90% of our budget — mostly in our newsroom,” Evans wrote. 

“This claim that they did everything in their power to avoid these layoffs, they never once came to staff and ask if we take pay cuts… they agreed to take roughly 20% pay cuts,” Branden Richardson, former LBPost reporter told Random Lengths News.

Evans will receive a 10% pay raise during the company-wide cuts and that is due to the board of directors forcing her to take a pay raise however there has also been no indication of a self-imposed pay cut.

Amongst the concerns of the former employees was the coverage of the city itself, concerned with Long Beach potentially becoming a news desert due to its newsroom being thinned. A few months ago, near the start of the year, the LATimes fired about 115 of its employees due to financial shortfalls. 

These layoffs mean that Long Beach and the LA County area will get less coverage over time, especially for minority communities. 

“I am a part of the layoffs, so that means that LBPost has no representation for the Black and Latino community,” Jackie Rae, multimedia reporter for the LBPost who was a part of this round of layoffs. 

She alleges that Evans not only mishandled the budget the Post had on hand but was far too reliant on  Molina’s donation, a donation that was supposed to come on the back of a large-scale divestiture from the LBPost and Journal on the part of Molina’s investment firm, Pacific6.

Near the end of 2023, the LBPost transitioned from a for-profit to a non-profit organization that can receive grants and donations in a philosophical shift for the post to be more service-centric and to better serve Long Beach by minimizing perverse incentives. 

This transition caused tension as according to Ruiz, the LBPost newsrooms were allegedly coerced into working for free which became an HR investigation that resulted in the Post having to pay out for those two weeks of wages for the 14-person newsroom. 

Amid the tensions, lack of communication, and blindsiding, the LBPost has invested in an additional studio along with their new office amid these layoffs. The employees view this as a misalignment of priorities on the part of the LBPost.