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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 16, 2019)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | August 16, 2019 | PAGE 5 From Page 4 ginia, Florida, Nebraska, Mon- tana, and Wyoming have union- ized. So have print magazines like New York magazine, the New Yorker, and Fast Com- pany. Not that there weren’t set- backs and failures too. Some employers fought unionization. Joe Ricketts, billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade and patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs, shut down the sites Gothamist and DNAinfo and laid off 115 workers in five cities a week after the sites New York workers voted to form a union in 2017. Gawker itself went dark in August 2016 just months after signing a three-year union con- tract that guaranteed a $50,000 minimum salary, a successor clause, and union rights. The site was killed by a $140 million court judgment in a lawsuit over its having published video of Hulk Hogan having sex with his friend’s wife. But six other Gawker Media sites remain union under new ownership, in- cluding Jezebel, Gizmodo and Deadspin, and workers reached agreement with the latest owner, Above, Vox Media employees swarm the offices of Writers Guild of America, East on June 6, 2019. More than 300 Vox Media employees took part in a 24- hour strike that day, and soon after, ratified their first collective bargaining agreement. A month later, 49 writer-producers at affiliated Vox Entertain- ment joined the union. G/O Media, on a second collec- tive bargaining agreement this March. Nolan, who now reports at the G/O site Splinter News, says in- dustry’s volatility is the biggest factor behind unionization. “The biggest motivation for a lot of people is just wanting to have some level of stability, wanting to have a career instead of constantly being on this tread- mill hopping from job to job, try- ing to hustle all the time to keep yourself afloat.” The workforce is also bringing (WGA) East and NewsGuild- Communications Workers of America (CWA). WGA East is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO and a sister to the independent Hollywood union WGA West. Its core member- ship consists of about 4,000 writers in the television and film industries, but it has added over 1,000 members since the online media explosion began. Meanwhile, the NewsGuild- CWA — known as the Newspa- per Guild (TNG) until 2015 — was historically a union of print a distinctive agenda to union bar- gaining. Several newsrooms have negotiated diversity com- mitments from employers, in which they pledge to interview at least some minority applicants before each hiring decision. Pro- tections against sexual harass- ment are also big. So are provi- sions intended to ensure editorial independence from owners’ busi- ness interests. The wave of organizing is bringing not just members but new energy into two unions: Writers Guild of America newspaper reporters. It too has added over 1,000 members since the union wave began. The impacts may benefit the union movement overall. One side effect of the continuing wave is likely to be much more sympathetic and knowledgeable coverage of unions. SEE THE CONTRACTS Writers Guild of America East pub- lishes all its collective bargaining agreements online at wgaeast.org/ guild-contracts/staff-contracts.
