Daily News Union Takes Contract Fight to Alden Head’s Montauk Doorstep
Heath Freeman, head of Alden Global Capital, owner of the second largest newspaper chain in the country including our hometown newspaper, the New York Daily News, lives in a swanky mansion in the ritzy Hamptons shore town of Montauk. Meanwhile some of Daily News journalists earn so little they qualify for low-income housing.
The Daily News Union brought the fight to Freeman’s doorstep, taking their protests on the road, traveling more than four hours to let his neighbors know their town’s most notorious resident is a union buster, a destroyer of newspapers and someone who refuses to pay his workers a living wage. Members of the Daily News Union—which represents reporters, content editors, photographers and copy editors at New York’s Hometown Newspaper—spent Saturday afternoon distributing informational flyers throughout Montauk. Shoppers and tourists who visited popular shore community on Long Island also saw a message truck circling downtown to further highlight Freeman’s role in siphoning resources and profits from the Daily News.
Alden Global Capital acquired the Daily News in 2021 and has followed the same playbook it carries out at all its newspapers: Sell off all assets, drain resources, cut salaries and staff and freeze pay. The Daily News Union has been fighting for a fair contract for more than three years and what they are seeking is not unreasonable: Living wages, industry standard benefits and job security protections. But Freeman and Alden refuse to agree to anything that would allow unionized journalists to live in the nation’s most expensive city.
“Heath Freeman basically strip-mined the Daily News to finance his ego-driven Montauk resort adventure,” said Graham Rayman, criminal justice reporter for the Daily News and a member of the union’s bargaining team. “While he hobnobs with the glitterati on the East End, the Daily News staff grind along without a raise in a decade but still somehow manage to put out a highly competitive paper. Freeman could care less about the quality of the product. If he did, he wouldn't be offering a $55,000 starting salary and no ongoing 401K match in the most expensive places to live in the country." Click here to sign the petitionto support the Daily News Union!