NewsGuild-CWA Achieves Historic Legislative Win

The New York Assembly and Senate last week passed a first-of-its-kind journalism jobs tax credit in the 2025 budget. The credits will become law when New York Governor Kathy Hochul signs the state budget.

The job tax credits were first introduced as the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (S.625-Hoylman-Sigal/A.2958-Woerner). The final budget language provides $30 million in tax credits each year over three years, covering half of a journalist’s salary up to $50,000 each year. Publishers will only be able to use these employment tax credits to rebuild their newsrooms by hiring new reporters and retaining current staff.

The organizing effort for this initiative has been spearheaded by the Albany Newspaper Guild, New York News Publishers Association, the New York State AFL-CIO, NewsGuild-CWA, and the Communications Workers of America.

NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss said, “Journalists are the watchdogs of democracy’s flame and we have to support them. The NewsGuild-CWA applauds New York state for leading the country and passing first-of-its-kind legislation to support journalism jobs and recognizing the important role journalists play by shining a light and protecting our democracy.”

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This post originally appeared on cwa-union.org.