Chicago Tribune journalists filed suit Thursday against the newspaper’s owner, claiming it has knowingly paid them less than their white or male counterparts.
The federal lawsuit, filed as a class-action claim, seeks back pay for most Black and female reporters at the newspapers to remedy pay discrepancies amounting to tens of thousands of dollars each, and accuses the newspaper’s owners of “[fostering] a culture of secrecy surrounding the pay and salaries of their workforce.”
The suit also claims that the newspaper’s stated efforts to recruit more diverse journalists through targeted programs are in reality “a source of cheap labor to depress the salaries of women and minority journalists.”
“My beat has been about Black and Brown communities and inequities — the disparities, the wealth gap, homeownership, all of that,” said reporter Darcel Rockett, one of the seven named plaintiffs. “And to report on this routinely and then, in your own house, for it to fall on deaf ears … it’s debilitating.”
Black women were allegedly paid 20 percent less than white male journalists.
The seven journalists who filed suit are criminal justice reporter Madeline Buckley, photojournalists Stacey Wescott and Terrence James, opinion content editor Colleen Kujawa, deputy senior content editor Deanese Williams and senior reporters Darcel Rockett and Christy Gutowski.
They are representing a group of “greater than 50 individuals” through their class action suit, the complaint states.
A spokesman for the paper’s owner, the hedge fund Alden Group Capital, said the company had not yet reviewed the suit.