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.
