Another way that the formation of NEOMG has been viewed is as a strategy to weaken, and ultimately kill, a labor union, by moving tasks from the unionized "Plain Dealer" staff to the non-unionized staff at cleveland.com. The division of "The Plain Dealer" into two separate companies, a unionized, print organization and a non-union, online organization, was dubbed a "transparent union-busting schism scheme" by "Cleveland Scene" magazine. The labor union representing Plain Dealer employees was called, from its founding in 1933 until its closure in 2020 as a result of these changes, Newspaper Guild Local 1, because it was the first local chapter of the national union now called the NewsGuild. The Plain Dealer News Guild also called NEOMG's formation evidence of Advance's involvement in "union-busting", and repeated the claim in response to subsequent layoffs.