+ April 4, 2021

Wednesday’s bargaining session, we received several counterproposals from management, on Wages, Tenure, Unpaid Leaves, Vacation/P.T.O., N.D.A.s, Diversity and Inclusion, Family Leave, Hours and Overtime, and Outside Work. The union offered a counterproposal on Remote Work.

The good news is that we’re ready to sign tentative agreements on Diversity and Inclusion and N.D.A.s—proposals that we first put forth in April and November of 2019, respectively. We’ve secured a number of accountability measures related to diversity-and-inclusion efforts—including an annual internal survey to be developed and distributed by The New Yorker’s joint labor-management diversity committee—and we have finally memorialized enforceable language ending the use of nondisclosure agreements in situations related to discrimination, harassment, or retaliation. We’re excited about these important steps toward making our workplace safer and more inclusive for employees from all backgrounds, which has been a core issue for our union from the beginning. We’ll keep pushing for strong commitments to inclusive hiring practices, and for the right to Guild representation during harassment investigations.

Though management made a few promising movements on their wage proposal—increasing their proposed minimums and eliminating the idea of unilateral wage reduction—the two sides are still far apart on many economic items. The company’s new proposed salary floor of $52,000 is still well below industry standards. Management continues to reject an experience credit that would address decades of underpayment for longtime employees, and the company is still proposing a general-wage-increase structure that would only perpetuate that kind of stagnation in the future. Annual salary adjustments of just 1.5 per cent practically guarantee that our salaries will depreciate in value while inflation and the cost of living increase at much higher rates.

Equally if not more troubling is the company’s position on hours and overtime. In management’s view, the very idea of a workday or a workweek for salaried full-time employees is a meaningless concept; they seem to believe that the company is infinitely entitled to employees’ time, and that virtually no one should be eligible for comp time or overtime pay regardless of the number of hours they work, even late at night or on weekends. (Their proposal is not so much “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will” as it is “eight hours for Condé, eight hours for Condé, eight hours for Condé.”)

We understand that our publication requires a certain amount of agility and, often, extra work, but employees should still be afforded a reasonable work-life balance, which is why we deliberately structured our hours proposal around flexible scheduling and comp time—a system that would require managers to put some forethought into managing workflow and scheduling, rather than relying on workers to simply be available around the clock. The company’s proposal—which, among other indignities, would let management make unilateral, permanent changes to employees’ schedules with only a week’s notice—obliterates any notion of work-life balance, and also colors our discussion of wages. We’ve been proposing salary minimums based on the idea of a standard thirty-five-hour workweek (seven working hours per day, plus an hour for a lunch break). But those salaries are worth much less if there are literally no parameters around the amount of work or the number of hours they’re meant to pay for. Additionally, the company is still seeking to restrict employees’ ability to perform outside work, which many of us do to make ends meet and to grow our careers. The wages that the company has proposed still come nowhere near to justifying the claim they’re trying to stake on workers’ time and talents.

Though we still have a lot of ground to cover, Wednesday’s session was productive—no doubt owing to the power of our strike vote. But we currently have just one more bargaining date on the calendar, and we’ll need to keep the pressure on management to meet with us more frequently in order to avert a strike. Stay tuned for more information about upcoming actions, and please continue circulating our ally pledge—so far, more than twenty-four hundred New Yorker Union supporters and New Yorker readers and subscribers have signed, agreeing not to cross our picket line if we have to strike. This outpouring of solidarity shows, once again, that we are not in this fight alone.

Please join us at the bargaining table again on Wednesday, April 21st, and stay ready to mobilize in the meantime. As long as we’re unified and prepared to act, a fair first contract is in sight.

+ March 29, 2021

Big thanks to all who participated in last week’s overwhelmingly successful strike-authorization vote, and to those who came out to Saturday’s rally! It was a beautiful day to celebrate our solidarity and to show off our excellent signage, and it was great to see so many members and supporters there. There will be more action to come—and please remind friends, family, and fans that they can sign up on our Web site (at the bottom of the page) to receive e-mail updates.

At Friday morning’s bargaining session, we announced the results of our strike vote to management: ninety-eight per cent of the New Yorker Union voted in favor of authorization, as did a hundred per cent of the Pitchfork Union and ninety-two per cent of the Ars Technica Union. We expressed our hope that this vote would motivate the company to bargain in good faith and with urgency, so that we can resolve our outstanding issues at the table and avoid a strike. But, when we recommended that management make more time for bargaining than the two dates scheduled in April (April 7th and 21st), they balked, citing spring-break plans as a conflict. With more than twenty-five unresolved proposals currently in management’s court, that’s not a wise or productive choice. While we wait to hear from them, we’ll continue to organize and emphasize the clear message that our strike vote has sent: that we have a mandate to do whatever it takes to get a fair contract.

Before Friday’s session, management finally provided the job descriptions for individual titles that we’ve been requesting for months (though, incredibly, still not all of them!). We hoped that these descriptions would at least clarify the logic behind management’s proposed salary minimums. Unfortunately, they seem to have approached the project primarily as an exercise in trying to justify their misclassification of many unit members who should be eligible for overtime. On Friday, they returned only one counterproposal, on remote work.

The union presented counterproposals on family leave, N.D.A.s, diversity and inclusion, retirement, tenure, unpaid leaves, vacation and P.T.O., coverage and jurisdiction, and wages. We made movement even on proposals where the company has refused to budge—effectively bargaining against ourselves—and also on many wage minimums. We adjusted our proposed general annual wage increases and lowered our salary floor from $65,000 to $63,500—a decision that our committee did not take lightly. We offered these compromises as an indication of our eagerness to reach a deal and as an invitation to management to respond in good faith.

After the session, management sent an e-mail—first to New Yorker staff, and then to all U.S. employees of Condé Nast—touting several recent improvements to employment conditions and provisions that they’ve agreed to in bargaining. It’s important to remember that every single item they listed came about as a result of union members’ advocacy and collective action: converting G.E.S. employees to staff; granting those employees full credit for their time worked under G.E.S.; additional days of paid leave for bereavement and for visa proceedings; and just cause. New Yorker and Condé Nast management fought us on all of these changes to the status quo, but our union organized, mobilized, and held firm in our demands. Now even the company seems to agree that our workplace is better for it.

Also worth noting: management has spent months resisting enforceable contract language that would end the use of N.D.A.s across all of Condé Nast in situations related to harassment, even after the company publicly unveiled its new policy last February. And, shortly after announcing the Condé-wide expanded parental leave, management memorably tried to withhold it from Guild members who had just become parents, blaming contract negotiations. Only when we volunteered to donate our own paid time off did the company relent and grant our colleagues the full ten weeks offered to other employees.

The evidence couldn’t be clearer: Organizing works, and direct action works. We’ve proved it repeatedly over the past two and a half years. Every fight has made our union stronger and more united, and has raised the bar for labor standards at The New Yorker and in our industry. Last week was a new milestone in a historic campaign, and an inspiring demonstration of our collective power—and that’s the kind of muscle that will get us over the finish line. Together, we have the power to finally win this contract.

+ March 15, 2021

Thanks to all who observed Friday’s bargaining session, which, at management’s request, started an hour later than scheduled. They arrived at the table with twelve counterproposals, but, unfortunately, most of them showed, at best, minimal movement—and in some cases no movement—from the company’s previous positions, which largely memorialized the status quo (including by letting management retain the right to make changes at their discretion).

In their latest counter on wages, management stuck with the $50,000 salary floor that they had last proposed, and increased some other proposed minimums by small amounts ranging from $1,500 to $2,500. They proposed annual general wage increases at a rate of 1% for unit members paid $80,000 or more and 1.25% for people whose salaries fall below that threshold. This is far below the range of 2.5% to 4.5% that we proposed, and would not even keep up with the cost of living. They also rejected both a minimum per-cent increase when someone receives a promotion and the “experience credit” that we proposed in order to boost the salaries of longer-serving unit members who have experienced the most extreme wage stagnation.

Needless to say, this was a disappointment: management’s proposal, once again, is not structured to remedy the patterns of severe underpayment and inequity that have festered at The New Yorker for decades, nor to attract or retain a talented, dedicated, diverse workforce. The salary minimums that the company has proposed are still well below the industry standard, and certainly aren’t appropriate for employees of what our managers have repeatedly described as the top magazine in the country. It’s hard to read their proposed G.W.I. as anything but a signal that management does not see The New Yorker as a place where people who need to earn a living should be able to build careers.

Representatives of Condé Nast and Advance Publications seemed annoyed that we weren’t grateful for the crumbs they’re offering; it was hard to tell what the New Yorker managers on the committee thought, because none of them spoke up to defend their proposal. Patrick Butler, the company’s outside counsel, suggested several times that management would move only as much as the union does—a misguided and cynical approach to negotiations, and not even an accurate characterization of their proposal, which moved significantly less in total on proposed minimum salaries and G.W.I. than our last. From the beginning, the union has presented fair, reasonable wage proposals that are both corrective and in line with economic realities; if our asks seem extreme to management, it’s because current and past practice is so abysmal.

Meanwhile, the company’s chintzy proposals are designed to force us to bargain against ourselves and to test how much exploitation they can get away with. Patrick kept saying that the point is to “meet in the middle,” but we aren’t coming from equivalent positions—to paraphrase one member of our bargaining committee, the company started underground, but the union did not start in the sky. We’re trying to effect meaningful, lasting change, while they’re trying to hew as close as possible to an untenable status quo. The onus is on management to make more significant movement toward the union, not vice versa. We’re ready to negotiate, but we can’t in good conscience compromise our members’ needs when we know that the company is deliberately lowballing us.

Instead of promising substantial improvements to wages that might alleviate our concerns about other items, they’re attempting to chip away at our demands across the board so that they can avoid making much-needed repairs and continue withholding money from the diligent workers on whom their business relies. Management has told us that they hear us, but that isn’t reflected in their proposals. As we know from experience, if they won’t translate their listening into action, we’ll have to make them.

We did reach a tentative agreement on internal freelance work. We also got the company to grant three days of paid immigration leave for work-related visa proceedings, and to give employees full credit for time worked under G.E.S. in calculating severance and P.T.O. (It's worth noting that when we voiced our frustration with their wage counter, members of management’s committee insisted that the conversation was "unproductive," but each of these instances of movement by management came after vehement arguments from our committee members in earlier sessions.) The union presented counterproposals on remote work and editorial integrity. We are still waiting for the company to supply job descriptions.

Our next bargaining session is scheduled for the morning of Friday, March 26th, from 10 A.M. to noon, but we have a lot of organizing to do before then—now is the time to turn up the heat. The vast majority of you have already pledged to do what it takes to win a fair contract, and now is the time to stand together and show management what we’re capable of. We’ll hold a membership meeting tomorrow—Tuesday, March 16th—at 3 P.M. to discuss next steps.

+ March 4, 2021

At the bargaining table on Wednesday, the union presented to management fourteen counterproposals and one new proposal, Maintenance of Standards (which simply affirms that our working conditions, including wages and hours, will stay the same or improve after a contract is ratified). We responded to management’s latest volleys on:

• Coverage and Jurisdiction
• Employee Categories
• Family Leave
• Hours and Overtime
• Internal Freelance Work
• Military and Civil Service
• Prohibition of Nondisclosure Agreements for Harassment and Discrimination
• Promotions and Transfers
• Retirement
• Tenure
• Training
• Unpaid Leaves
• Vacation and Paid Time Off
• Wages and Compensation

Since our session last week, the union’s bargaining committee has been hard at work determining where to move and where to hold, especially on our package of economic proposals, which we’re trying to make more feasible for the company without selling our members short. We modified our Hours and Overtime proposal in ways that would lessen the administrative burden on the company and allow flexibility in scheduling while still assuring a reasonable work-life balance for members. (It’s not an outlandish concept that employees should be fairly compensated for all the hours of labor they provide, whether in regular pay, overtime, or comp time.) On Wages and Compensation, we adjusted our proposed rates for general annual wage increases and for most positions’ salary minimums, but we held on the $65,000 unit-wide floor that we originally proposed, which would be in line with competitors in the media industry. (As a reminder, management last offered a $50,000 floor, no change to most other salary minimums in their previous proposal, and a one-per-cent annual wage increase across the board.)

The movements we made were thoughtful, deliberate, and in good faith. But management said they were “disappointed” and baselessly accused us (again) of slowing down negotiations, perhaps in part because we introduced language that would give longtime employees whose salaries are still below the minimums (i.e., members whose pay has been stagnant for years, or even decades) some credit for their years of service in the form of a one-time salary adjustment upon ratification. We’re demanding that the company raise the bar in real and significant ways, and, if the movements they’ve made so far seem like progress to them, maybe it’s because the bar is so low. We understand that we won’t get everything we’re asking for—we’re ready to negotiate, and the economic package we’ve offered includes many opportunities to do so. But, as we fight for what’s fair and right for our members, we won’t lower our standards.

Management still has not produced the long-awaited job descriptions that we’ve been told for almost a year are in progress (the union proposed job descriptions in April, 2020, to no response), but on Wednesday they did bring one (1) counterproposal, on Editorial Integrity. We were surprised to learn that Condé Nast and The New Yorker want to reserve the right to require editorial employees to work on paid advertising content. They claimed that this situation “probably” wouldn’t come up, but the presence of such language in our contract would seem to contradict the journalistic ethics and editorial integrity for which our publication is known.

Management said that this week’s session “did not feel like a step forward.” What they mean is that it did not feel like a step in their direction. Would it be a “step forward” to keep forcing members to work extra hours and take on extra responsibilities for no extra compensation? Or to maintain salary minimums well below industry standards while insisting on the highest-quality work? Or to agree that some employees are entitled to half as much severance because they happened to be jointly employed through G.E.S.? These are all things management has proposed, and, to us, they’re not steps forward. We’ve done things management’s way long enough; we unionized in order to do things differently.

We’re eager to finish this contract, which is why we’ve encouraged the company to follow our lead in providing the job descriptions they’ve promised and a full package of economic counterproposals when we meet again for bargaining next week. But lowering our standards or compromising our journalistic ethics is not the way to secure an agreement that will build a stronger New Yorker. We’ll hold another edit-all bargaining update this Friday and will be back at the table next Friday, the 12th. As a union, we need to keep the heat up to keep things moving forward. We have to stay ready to do whatever it takes.

+ February 24, 2021

Thank you again to everyone who participated in our salary-transparency action on Slack, and who submitted testimonies for our social-media campaign. We’re grateful to those who shared their stories. These conversations foster transparency in our workplace and industry, laying a path toward real change. (If you feel inspired to submit an anonymous testimony of your own, you can do so here.)

It seems that management was paying attention. The wage proposal they brought to the table on Tuesday was more in line with what we expected to see in their first counter, and similar to what our union colleagues at Pitchfork and Ars Technica received earlier this month. Management proposed raising the over-all salary floor in our shop to $50,000. They proposed an annual one-per-cent general wage increase (half of the two per cent that’s been distributed via “merit” raises in past years), and they want to retain the right to unilaterally cut higher-earning members’ salaries in the event of undefined “financial distress.” (Usually, the union would negotiate with the company to protect unit members’ salaries and jobs during a financial emergency.) We’re pleased that the company has finally agreed to adopt a general-wage-increase framework, which is typical in union contracts, but we’re pushing for much better minimums—where they made no movement, aside from the very bottom of the scale—and more substantial increases, and we feel that wage decreases have no place in our contract.

We also want to streamline the pay structure so that wages are better regulated across departments and platforms. Management’s proposal is more reflective of the current system, or lack thereof: for example, they proposed four different minimums for different “associate editor” titles. (To be clear, we’re just talking about minimums! Our latest proposal, like the company’s, explicitly states that they can always pay anyone a higher rate.) When we asked them to explain the differences between these roles that would warrant different minimums—as little as fifteen hundred dollars apart, and as much as ten thousand—no one on management’s committee had a clear answer.

And though they claimed to be “working on” job descriptions for unit members, which might help us understand the salary structure they’ve proposed, they couldn’t tell us when we might see them, saying only that their “goal” is to deliver them soon—something we’ve been hearing for months. (The union proposed job descriptions in April, 2020.) The purpose of a contract is to make sure that employees are paid more, but also more equitably. We’re trying to build a fairer future, not to perpetuate the problems of the past.

In happier news, we reached a tentative agreement on Holidays. This provision improves on the status quo, including by confirming Juneteenth as a paid holiday. Management also presented counters on Military Service and Remote Work, while we countered on Editorial Integrity, Health and Safety, and Hiring.

We’ll be back at the table next Wednesday, March 3rd, when we plan to return a package of economic proposals, including wages, to the company. There’s no doubt that the recent momentum we’ve seen in negotiations is a result of the powerful collective action we’ve taken. Management understands that they’re bargaining with all of us now—and that we’re united and ready to act. Keep it up! This is the kind of solidarity that will win us a strong contract.

+ February 10, 2021

The main event of Tuesday’s bargaining session was our counterproposal on Wages. As we, and several members, explained to management in previous sessions, the proposal they gave us at the end of January was unacceptable. In our counter, we offered some small movement on the annual salary increases, but we held firm on the salary minimums, which are reasonable by design—certainly not moon shots—and correct for years of underpayment and disparities. We also stuck to our rejection of management’s provision that the company retain the right to decrease members’ salaries. In unionized workplaces, if a company faces true financial exigency, management can bargain with the union over possibilities, such as salary reductions, at the time that they arise—we’re not going to cede our right to those negotiations in our contract.

We also gave management a counter on Outside Work, which governs our ability to do work outside The New Yorker. Management’s most recent counter would restrict our ability to do work of any kind for a list of “direct competitors” that includes effectively every national general-interest publication. In our counter, we proposed several ways to make the proposal workable: reducing the number of publications on the competitor list, narrowing the types of outside work for which we would need a manager’s approval (the type of bargaining-unit work someone does for The New Yorker), or tying the permission requirement to salary, so that only workers who are already being paid a premium wage would need to seek approval. Members of management’s committee seemed to think that our revisions were a big ask, but they were necessary responses to their overly restrictive proposal. This issue is simple. Our unit is full of talented people who prioritize creative work—these are the very qualities that make us valuable to the magazine. Many of us depend on freelancing because our New Yorker salaries are so low—if you have to do outside work to make ends meet, you shouldn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to do it.

We also gave counters on Vacation/P.T.O. and Holidays, both proposals on which we’re getting close to T.A.s., and on Health Care and Welfare and Remote Work, where we accepted parts of management’s frameworks while building in important protections for our members.

Management gave us counters on Tenure, Employee Categories, Editorial Integrity, Vacation/P.T.O., and Identity Theft; outright rejected our Rights Participation proposal; and told us that they aren’t making any movement on the severance they last proposed as part of Reductions in Force. We also received a list of internal freelance rates, and we were happy to see improved rates for people in the unit who contribute to the magazine or Web site.

There has been a clear uptick in the productivity of these sessions since the walkout—management is clearly feeling the pressure from our solidarity and collective action. By our lights, that’s six proposals that we passed to management on Tuesday. Management gave us five proposals and two verbal responses. (You might have seen a different tally in a different e-mail, which confused us a bit, but who’s counting?) As management’s outside counsel, Patrick Butler, summed up the session: “You gave us some stuff, we gave you some stuff.” Yep. That progress is happening only because of how successfully we as a unified group have shown our power. Thank you! Let’s keep it up.

+ February 4, 2021

Thanks to everyone who observed this morning’s bargaining session, which further proved what we’ve seen in the past: pressure from members pushes management to do their homework. But we have to keep the heat up! Although management arrived at the table today with a whopping eight counterproposals (and a ninth e-mailed afterward, because of technical difficulties), the content of those proposals was largely disappointing. Here are a few of the sticking points we discussed today:

Vacation/P.T.O.: We’re still pushing for the contract to guarantee each bargaining-unit employee five days of bereavement leave per year, but the company is holding at three. They claim that under “special circumstances” employees could ask for more time, and likely wouldn’t be denied—but this creates an unnecessary burden during a time of grief, and, besides, we aren’t interested in a contract whose main feature is that it allows for exceptions to be made. The point of a contract is to build humanity into our workplace at a structural level—not to keep workers reliant on the good will of individual bosses.

Training: The company wants to retain the right to lay someone off or move them into a new role and cut their salary as a result of the introduction of new equipment or technology that might alter or make obsolete a bargaining-unit role. (This is just one of multiple scenarios where they’ve proposed that we give them the right to reduce employees’ salaries, which is pretty much unheard of in any union contract.) We strongly feel that no one should lose their livelihood or any part of their salary to automation.

Outside Work: The company’s position on bargaining-unit employees’ ability to perform outside work is unreasonably restrictive. Some members of management’s bargaining committee seem to see their proposal as establishing a “right of first refusal” that would still allow employees to pursue outside opportunities after New Yorker editors have the opportunity to consider their project. But others made clear that the proposal’s purpose—particularly for the Art, Photo, and Video departments—is primarily to prevent publications they see as competitors from publishing unit members’ freelance work, even at the financial and professional expense of those employees. And that’s what the language in their proposal reflects. It’s an overreach that would hamstring employees’ careers, and also make The New Yorker a less desirable place to work. Furthermore, the company has not proposed salary minimums that even remotely justify the claim they’re trying to stake on employees’ creative work.

Unpaid Leaves: Our proposal would allow for two types of unpaid leave: up to a year of unpaid personal leave, for any reason (during which the employee pays for 100% of their benefits) or two months of specifically creative leave, such as book leave, which could be taken in separate increments (during which the company keeps providing benefits). The company, somewhat astonishingly, proposed that employees would be eligible for a three-month unpaid book leave only after ten years of service. We know that some managers who have worked here for only a few years have been able to take book leave, and we shouldn’t be held to a different standard.

We also received management’s responses on Coverage and Jurisdiction, Holidays, Remote Work, Retirement, and Family Leave. The themes we’ve seen throughout the past two-plus years of negotiations stand: the company wants to retain as much control as possible, and their proposals are broadly based on what they understand to be the status quo. Management tried to justify offering nothing beyond the status quo on several proposals—and outright rejecting our proposal on Tuition and Student Loan Assistance—by saying that they would rather invest in salaries. But their wage proposal has already shown that that is not the case. Until that changes, we’re certainly not inclined to accept rock-bottom offers on everything else. If the status quo was working for employees, we wouldn’t have unionized: the goal of this process is to create a contract that corrects long-standing problems and guarantees improvements to the terms and conditions of our members’ employment.

We’ll get there, but only through collective action that supports our proposals at the bargaining table. To keep management accountable and on track, we need to stay united and ready to escalate. To that end, we’ll be holding a membership meeting this Monday, February 8th, at noon—we hope to see you there, and at our next bargaining session, on Tuesday, February 9th.

+ January 27, 2021

Last week, our union took a strong stand together, walking out for twenty-four hours in protest of management’s unfair wage proposal. In this week’s back-to-back bargaining sessions, management responded to their employees’ overwhelming dissatisfaction with another insult: they did not offer a revised proposal, nor did they supply the full set of economic proposals and the information that we would require in order to respond to their proposal.

At Tuesday’s session, management’s bargaining team showed up with counterproposals on internal freelance work, health care/welfare, and hours/overtime. Their health-care and hours counters reflect a pattern we’ve seen throughout the past two-plus years of negotiations: broadly, management wants to retain sole discretion over the terms and conditions of employment, along with the right to exploit employees’ labor. It was a heated session, in which the union-side bargaining committee once again urged management to reconsider their approach to wages and to the bargaining process.

Although management repeatedly claimed to “hear” our members’ concerns, they arrived at the table on Wednesday completely empty-handed. We provided them a list of the twenty-four proposals that are currently in the company’s court, and proceeded with a presentation by unit members, who delivered powerful testimonies about their experiences working at The New Yorker and the pressing need for a new wage structure and a system of annual increases. (Huge shout-out to Jasper, Genevieve, Naib, and Doug—thank you so much for sharing your stories!) Managers expressed gratitude and sympathy, along with a professed commitment to reaching a first contract collaboratively and efficiently—but, a couple of hours after both sides broke for a caucus, the company’s outside counsel told us that management’s committee would not have any counterproposals ready today, aborting a bargaining session that was scheduled to last a full day.

Despite the words that come out of their mouths, management’s untenable proposals, total unpreparedness, and unwillingness to bargain in good faith show ongoing disrespect for us as workers and for our right to collective representation. We can’t let this stand. Now is the time for us to remain unified, organized, and ready to fight. We’ll be mobilizing in the coming weeks to keep the pressure up within the shop, and you should hear from a union leader soon about possible future escalations.

Our next bargaining session is scheduled for February 9th, but we’ve told management that we would like to get a makeup session on the calendar before then. Feel free to reach out to any U.C. or B.C. member if you have questions—or if you’re interested in sharing a testimonial, in person or anonymously, at a future bargaining session and/or as part of our union’s social-media campaign. We will win this contract, even if management insists on doing things the hard way.

+ January 14, 2021

On Tuesday, January 12, in bargaining, management presented a partial counter to the economic package that we presented in November. As a refresher, our wages proposal included salary minimums for roles throughout the shop that would serve as a corrective for years of sub-market salaries. We also proposed a structure for annual, guaranteed wage increases for all unit members going forward, ranging from three to five per cent, depending on salary. Our proposal was ambitious—a wage floor of $65,000 for full-time positions—but intentionally very reasonable, with the most substantial increases applied to the members who make the lowest salaries in our union.

Management responded with a counterproposal that was shocking, even after two years of bargaining, and frankly an insult to all of us. They claimed that they were committed, like us, to raising the lowest salaries in the shop, but proposed a wage floor of just $45,000 (only $3,000 more than the current minimum). They said their proposed salaries were based partly on “the market” but refused to answer when we asked what other companies they had looked at to arrive at this determination. They agreed to many of the changes to the current job-title structure we proposed, but kept the salary minimums for those titles so low that very few of us would actually receive a significant wage increase. They also proposed that in the first year of the contract, unit members who aren’t bumped up to a higher minimum salary would be divided into three tranches, receiving either a one- or two-per-cent increase, or nothing at all. For someone making $45,000, that two-per-cent increase would mean an additional $900 per year (before taxes), or just $75 per month.

To add insult to injury, in the years after ratification (i.e., starting in 2022), management proposed that there would be no guaranteed annual wage increases at all—only the current, deeply dysfunctional “merit”-based raise system, which leaves it completely up to management’s discretion whether each employee gets a raise or not. Letting this continue would only expand problematic pay disparities between employees. Finally, management added language saying that they retained the right to cut anyone’s salary by up to twenty per cent during the term of the contract. That is simply, as the Guild’s lawyer pointed out, not how collective-bargaining agreements work.

Their proposal went way beyond a normal, good-faith bargaining process in which two sides start with aspirational vs. conservative dollar amounts and figure out how to meet in the middle. By bringing this to the table, management’s committee has shown disrespect for our members, the work that we do, and for the bargaining process.

We will come together as a union. We should not and cannot accept management’s proposal and its draconian framework. By now we know that vehement arguments at the table aren’t enough to get our managers and the company to change their positions. Collective action is the only way to make sure that they will meet our demands for fair wages.

+ December 15, 2020

It’s Up to Management

With the exception of a few proposals to which we received counters this week, our entire contract is now in management’s hands. We came to the table this week anticipating responses to all non-economic matters, but, unfortunately, they came with just three: Remote Work, Health & Safety, and Training. After a long caucus (and a stern talking-to), they gave us three more: Outside Work, Expenses & Equipment, and Holidays.

Our full-day sessions this month were productive, and we need to build on that momentum—and management’s committee needs to do the work in between sessions so that they come to the table prepared with substantive responses. Our committee expressed disappointment that we didn’t reach our mutual goal of finishing a contract in 2020, and made clear that we expect to receive their response to our full economic package in the first session of next year, on January 12th.

In the interest of speeding up the process, we also proposed joint bargaining sessions for us, Ars Technica, and Pitchfork to negotiate “common terms” for company-wide issues, like benefits, holidays, paid and unpaid leaves, and harassment policies.

Economics and Remote Work

Condé Nast has yet to lift the company-wide promotion freeze (though, according to Roger Lynch’s latest e-mail, this doesn’t apply to Anna Wintour!) and claims not to know when it will. This means that it’s even more important for us to turn up the heat and insist that management negotiate wages with us as soon as possible. After the marathon just-cause bargaining session, in October, we stuck to our agreed-upon time frame to put all remaining proposals, including economics, on the table. It’s time for their committee to stop dragging their feet and put in that same effort.

In some happy news, Ars Technica has now officially joined us and Pitchfork in winning just cause, as have New York magazine and Quartz—the last of the eight shops across our local fighting for this protection. We're proud of what we accomplished together this year!

+ November 19, 2020

This week marked a major milestone for our union—we’ve entered wage negotiations. We heard member testimonials from two proofreaders who spoke in detail about their experiences with pay at The New Yorker. One described the reality, throughout his twenty-seven year tenure, of supplementing an income with side jobs, and made clear just how tough it is to get by in New York while earning less than a living wage. The other spoke about her eight years at the magazine, including her work as a subcontracted employee and the frustration of knowing that one’s salary isn’t nearly commensurate with one’s responsibilities, skill level, or tenure. Speaking up about pay at The New Yorker has long been difficult, in part by design, but we hope that’s changing, and our colleagues’ accounts, though difficult to hear, were illuminating and powerful.

We sent management our wage proposal, which includes minimum salaries associated with all job titles—which will be the most important component of bringing equity and transparency to our pay system—and annual increases across the unit. We also discussed a new Hours and Overtime proposal, which has been drafted to reflect the fact that the company’s classification of many union members as overtime exempt doesn’t hold up to legal scrutiny.

Next, we talked about bargaining dates. We were dismayed to hear that the company could commit to only two half-day sessions in December and three dates in January—and that they said they wouldn’t be able to respond to our economic proposals until January. Those who observed our marathon just-cause bargaining session in October will remember management’s repeated commitments to meeting for more frequent and longer sessions once they received our wage proposals. (We agreed on a timeline that entailed us sending our proposals in early to mid-November, which we honored, and they promised that they would give us fulsome responses “within a few weeks.”) Their sudden backpedalling on that was unacceptable, and we made our concerns on that point clear. By the end of the session, management agreed to full-day sessions in December, though we’ll need to continue to press them for full-day sessions in early 2021.

We’re all incredibly eager to dive into wage negotiations. Throughout this process, we’ve heard from many members about their struggles with the low salaries and lack of transparency at The New Yorker. We’re realistic about our economic proposals (the key word here is negotiation), but it’s important to remember that the increases we’ll be fighting for aren’t just raises—they’re a corrective measure to fix decades of insufficient pay at The New Yorker.

+ November 11, 2020

This Thursday marks two years since we started negotiating our first contract. It’s an anniversary of sorts, but the slow place of bargaining is nothing to celebrate. The marathon weekend of bargaining in early October that resulted in our tentative agreement on just cause demonstrated what we’ve been saying since the beginning: frequent, full-day negotiation sessions are what is necessary to build momentum and allow for the back-and-forth discussion that we need to get to a contract.

Despite frequent requests, nudges, and, frankly, pleas from the Bargaining Committee and others in the shop, management’s committee has scheduled only three dates (all half days) to meet with us in November and December. We had hoped to schedule a session for this Thursday—a crucial moment in bargaining as we gather the information needed to finalize our economic proposals. But, on Monday, management let us know that they would not be available to meet this week.

Twelve hours of bargaining will not get us to a contract by the end of the year. And it’s disappointing to see how quickly management’s sense of urgency about the process dissipates when there isn’t a picket on the horizon. We know that, for our members, reaching a contract remains a top priority. We need more sessions, and full-day sessions for the dates already scheduled in December. On Wednesday, several members of our shop sent e-mails to Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn, the deputy editor of the magazine and the newest member of management’s bargaining committee, asking her to work with her team and the company’s outside counsel to prioritize bargaining throughout the end of the year. We hope this is the last time we have to make such requests to management.

The Bargaining Committee has also been working on economic proposals that aim to raise salaries and add opportunities for meaningful career growth at The New Yorker. We’ve been developing these without being provided basic information from management, such as a full response to our proposal on titles and job descriptions (which they promised during just-cause negotiations but have yet to provide) and more detail on the company’s rationale for classifying many of its employees as ineligible for overtime pay—which we had hoped to discuss at the Thursday session that did not materialize. Despite these gaps in information, we’ve been making good progress.

We’re looking forward to this final phase of bargaining. We wouldn’t be in this strong position without all of you and your collective action over these many months—and years. And we’ll definitely need to keep the pressure on to get a strong contract finished sooner rather than later.

+ September 9, 2020

One of the most significant outstanding issues in our #Contract2020 campaign is just cause—or, in the company’s framing, “discipline and discharge.” Our just-cause proposal would establish an objective standard for discipline at The New Yorker: by agreeing that “there shall be no discipline except for just and sufficient cause,” the company would assure that bargaining-unit employees will not be punished or fired unfairly or capriciously, and would provide recourse to employees in case of a dispute. However, our managers have repeatedly refused to offer such assurance in writing in any enforceable way, proposing instead that management should retain “the right to determine, in its sole discretion, whether an employee’s conduct or performance warrants discipline, discharge, demotion, or transfer.”

Since management’s proposal would also prohibit employees from challenging discipline-related decisions, it’s important for our members to have a clear sense of what—under their Discipline and Discharge proposal—would constitute grounds for discipline, who would have the authority to issue discipline, and what that discipline might entail. The company has not satisfied our repeated formal written requests for this information (which we are entitled to by law), so we brought our questions to the bargaining table. In past conversations, management has frequently said that employees would “never” be disciplined for arbitrary or unfair reasons; hypothetical scenarios they’ve offered include the misuse of a diaeresis, or the color of someone’s shirt. Wednesday, when we asked them to commit their promises to writing by signing tentative agreements about these on-the-record examples, they refused. They could not commit to a single example of conduct for which an employee would not be disciplined—not even something as (hopefully) uncontroversial as an employee choosing not to wear a bra in the office.

When we turned to the Condé Nast employee handbook, management confirmed that violating official company policies could result in discipline, but they would not provide straightforward answers about the specifics. For example, the handbook says that employees should report all suspected misconduct, including inaccuracy of timesheets. We asked what would happen if an employee’s supervisor directed them to under-count their actual hours worked and the employee failed to report that to the company (which is, unfortunately, not a hypothetical scenario for multiple unit members). The company refused to clearly answer whether that employee would be disciplined.

Management, who arrived almost half an hour late, accused us of wasting time and dismissed our inquiries as irrelevant or far-fetched, and Patrick Butler, the company’s outside counsel, once again referred to our negotiations as “playing a game” and “spinning our wheels.” But this isn’t a game, and such disparaging remarks emphasize the power imbalance across the table—discipline is only hypothetical until it happens, and our members’ livelihoods are at stake. We’re seeking consistent, transparent expectations and procedures around performance and conduct in our workplace. Just cause would be the simplest way to insure these.

+ August 19, 2020

Although management’s committee previously claimed that they would not negotiate any further until we put wages on the table, we were happy to see them arrive Wednesday with a handful of written counter-proposals. Their change in attitude is the direct result of pressure from our members: by observing bargaining, participating in our work stoppage, signing the open letter to David Remnick, showing union support on social media, and discussing issues openly, we demonstrate our unit’s collective investment in this process. Our solidarity is our power.

Here’s what happened at the table on Wednesday, August 19:

• Management presented the following counter-proposals, to which we responded in writing after a caucus:
  • Guild Association Rights: Establishes a framework for bargaining-unit members to participate in union activity (membership meetings, etc.) and perform Guild work.
  • Outside Work: Establishes guidelines for unit members’ engagement in work outside of The New Yorker. (Current practice is inconsistent across departments.) The company’s proposal was overly restrictive, but management insists that their goal is to encourage, not stifle, bargaining-unit employees’ careers. Our counter includes parameters that should satisfy the company’s needs without infringing on members’ freedom to pursue additional opportunities and income.
  • Diversity & Inclusion: The final sticking point on this proposal has to do with publishing employee diversity statistics. The company confirmed in writing that Condé Nast will publish these statistics, which is a big step in the right direction. Our counter specifies that this data must be made publicly available and readily accessible to Condé’s readership in a way that demonstrates the diversity of each individual brand’s staff, not just Condé as a whole. (Although we didn’t receive a counter-proposal on hiring, we did have an illuminating conversation about hiring practices at The New Yorker and Condé Nast, specifically in the context of promoting diversity and inclusion, which reaffirmed the need for standards and accountability.)
• Management also presented a counter-proposal about Professional Development that we couldn’t agree to today, but likely would if our contract were to include a just-cause provision.
• The Guild presented a new proposal about Severance for employees terminated from The New Yorker.

+ August 11, 2020

At the negotiations held on August 11th, our members spoke powerfully on behalf of the labor side of the Joint Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Although we did not reach tentative agreements (T.A.s) on Diversity & Inclusion and Hiring, we did make some meaningful progress in these areas. At our last session, on July 29th, management said that they were unwilling to further negotiate any proposals, including these two, until they saw our wage proposal. Union members of the Joint Diversity and Inclusion Committee made clear to management that holding these two proposals hostage in order to force the union’s hand—essentially putting a price tag on our desire to improve diversity—was unacceptable, and that management must engage these issues in good faith at the table. As a result, management showed up today saying that they were ready to T.A. the latest version of our diversity proposal—but only if we moved the last outstanding point of dispute (publishing the results of an internal diversity survey on The New Yorker’s Web site) to another proposal.

We didn’t commit to that compromise, which management floated verbally—we’re not willing to push off yet another important accountability measure just so that the company can claim they’ve made good. We emphasized that if the company has real objections to publishing the results of a survey, it needs to raise them in the form of an actual written counterproposal. Patrick Butler, the company’s outside counsel, eventually did confirm that a written counterproposal is forthcoming. Parts of the conversation were repetitive and frustrating, but we’re glad that the company has seen that there’s still room to bargain over these issues, and that it’s worthwhile to do so.

We also presented a counterproposal on Guild Association Rights, and we answered some questions from management about our Outside Work proposal.

We’ll be back at the table next Wednesday, August 19th!

+ July 29, 2020

Thank you to everyone who signed our open letter to David Remnick demanding just cause. The letter has racked up more than a thousand signatures (and counting!) from supporters. But after today’s bargaining session, it's clear that our fight for a fair contract is far from over—we need to keep the pressure on.

Management is sticking to their strategy of withholding proposals and responses until we put wages on the table. They arrived this morning with no proposals or responses, and instead tried to draw us in to yet another circular conversation about the bargaining process itself. They couldn’t answer specific questions about the final piece of our diversity-and-inclusion proposal, which is close to agreement, and they didn’t have answers when asked about the details of their own discipline-and-discharge proposal. But we don’t take “no answer” for an answer—despite their evasions, we kept pressing and, in the end, did pry some new information out of them, proving that there’s still progress to be made. After a heated but ultimately productive exchange and a brief caucus, we presented counterproposals on anti-harassment and outside work.

There are nineteen proposals now in management’s court. Their responses to many of these proposals—like job descriptions, and coverage and jurisdiction—will help inform our wage proposals. Today, management reiterated what they said in the e-mail sent to the staff yesterday: looking at a “full package” of proposals would help both parties decide where to compromise. But this ignores the power imbalance inherent in these negotiations; their assurance that they won’t leverage wages against other items is increasingly unconvincing.

“We’ve played your game for two years,” Patrick Butler, management’s outside counsel, said. It’s disappointing but revealing to hear our members’ hard work described as a “game.” To us, this is serious. We’re trying to build the best contract possible, which is why we’re plowing ahead with our thoroughly considered proposals and requests for information. We know these matters are important, and the fact that management doesn’t treat them as such only shows why we must prioritize them.

+ July 22, 2020

After we waited nearly an hour for management’s committee to arrive, they showed up with just one counterproposal, on employees’ ability to take on outside work. (We first presented our one-sentence outside-work proposal, which would allow unit employees to do outside work provided that it doesn’t interfere with the performance of their work for The New Yorker, on June 3rd; management’s counter introduces a number of restrictions.)

The month-plus that has elapsed since our last session should have been plenty of time for them to prepare some other responses—at least on the subjects that we specifically asked to discuss today: diversity and inclusion, hiring, and N.D.A.s. But, instead of moving the conversation forward, management chose to withhold their responses and used our time to explain that they are “not inclined” to offer any more counterproposals until they receive our wage proposal.

Since we entered negotiations, our strategy has been to wait to tackle economics so that the company can’t leverage wages against non-economic items, like just cause. Management claims that many such items, like diversity and inclusion, are important to the company, too, but their actions at the table suggest otherwise: they’ve implied that it’s pointless to discuss these issues further until they can factor in dollar figures, and they dismissed the often difficult conversations we’ve had over the past several months—which have yielded real progress—as “spinning our wheels.”

This refusal to engage is insulting and unacceptable. We’ll keep pressing ahead with our proposals and requests for information, but it’s increasingly clear that the fight for our first contract will have to be won away from the table. The company still hasn’t even acknowledged our half-day work stoppage for just cause—which only means that we need to escalate in ways management can’t ignore.

+ June 25, 2020

Today, the New Yorker Union is undertaking a half-day work stoppage. From 9 A.M. to 1 P.M., union members will not participate in the production or the promotion of content for the print magazine or the Web site. We are withholding our labor to demand just cause in our contract, and in protest of management’s resistance to our proposal and refusal to provide us with information necessary for bargaining. If we do not receive a sufficient response from management on our just-cause proposal, we will be forced to take further action.

The proposal to which the company objects reads, “There shall be no discipline or dismissal without just and sufficient cause.” Just cause is an essential worker protection and among the core reasons we organized our union. A just-cause provision guarantees due process, promotes equity and accountability, and creates consistent, transparent standards. It provides workers recourse, protects us from capricious managers, and empowers us to speak up about things like salary disparities and editorial missteps without fear of retaliation.

This moment of cultural reckoning requires honest, challenging conversations about the work that we do—especially at companies that have a record of unfairness (like Condé Nast), that are governed by largely unwritten rules and expectations (like The New Yorker), and that are helmed by mostly white leadership (like both). Just cause allows those conversations to happen.

Our bosses insist that just cause would erode editorial standards, and, in doing so, they insult our colleagues at NewsGuild-represented outlets, like the New York Times and The New Republic, where just cause is a contract cornerstone. Management claims that just cause poses an existential threat to The New Yorker, thus pitting the interests of the publication directly against the interests of the people who make it. Management has also repeatedly invoked the spectre of arbitration (a last step in some discipline-related disputes), arguing that the company’s operations are too intricate for a third party to assess; meanwhile, Condé Nast has hired a union-busting law firm, Proskauer Rose, as a third party to investigate its workers’ allegations of discrimination.

Our managers have proposed an “editorial exception” that invalidates the very concept of just cause. This loophole would permit summary dismissal for any reason that management deems relevant to “editorial standards”—standards that, despite our requests for information, management has refused to articulate. The problem here is clear. If editorial standards are wholly undefined, it’s difficult to know when they’ve been violated, and even more difficult for a staffer to address the issue. Just cause, far from diminishing standards, insures their fair application.

As the past few weeks have shown, racism, abuse, and exploitation often go unchecked at Condé Nast. The New Yorker is not exempt from these dynamics, and, as the first and largest union at Condé Nast, we intend to raise the bar for all of our colleagues. We care deeply about this publication; we prove every day that we are dedicated to upholding the highest editorial and professional standards. We call on The New Yorker’s management to show the same commitment to its workers that we show to our work. We demand a contract that reflects the value of our labor and the principles in our pages. The foundation of that contract is just cause—no exceptions.

+ June 17, 2020

Our session on Wednesday was our first time having observers present during our virtual negotiations. We had a strong showing, which always helps remind management whom we’re fighting for. Here’s a quick rundown of events:

In perhaps unsurprising news, management didn’t come to the table with responses to our Hiring, Just Cause or N.D.A. proposals (though they did give us a response on Professional Development). This is frustrating given the fact that they recently told us they would respond to these proposals—and it’s even more indefensible given the pervasive racism and inequities at Condé Nast that employees have exposed this month.

We reminded management that the recent controversies are yet another reason why just cause is so important to our union. Having a fair, transparent system for discipline and discharge would, among other things, give employees the freedom to voice concerns about editorial decisions related to race or identity without fear of retribution. Fears of such punishment—which employees often experience in subtle ways, like getting disciplined for their attitude—aren’t exclusive to Condé workplaces like Bon Appétit and Vogue; they’re also felt at The New Yorker. Some of us are comfortable talking to our managers about editorial decisions, but some of us aren’t—and that’s why there should be a mechanism that helps everyone feel safe.

Management offered the same tired argument that we’ve heard for months: in the event that someone’s discipline or discharge is challenged, the company’s decision shouldn’t be subject to review by an arbitrator. Management distanced themselves from the controversies elsewhere in Condé and said again that The New Yorker’s editorial standards were too high and too subjective for a “third party” to adjudicate. (“This isn’t a factory floor,” the deputy editor said.) We responded that decisions affecting someone’s livelihood should be clearly communicated to the employee and—in the rare instances when a case goes to arbitration—absolutely be up for review. (By the way, management saw no irony in the fact that Condé just hired its ownthird party—a law firm with a long history of union-busting—to investigate complaints of workplace discrimination.)

New Yorker and Condé leadership continue to resist a contract provision that would protect the very employees who are being encouraged to talk openly about discriminatory workplace conditions. As our own conversations about pay inequity, job advancement, and job security have shown, The New Yorker is not immune from these issues. In light of our editor’s oft-stated commitment to fair treatment of all employees, his and the management bargaining team’s opposition to just cause feels more outrageous, more disrespectful, and more out of touch than ever.

+ June 3, 2020

We reached a Tentative Agreement on Privacy, and we presented a counter-proposal on Hiring, as well as a few new proposals on Tenure, Outside Work, and Remote Work. Management presented the several counters including Holidays and Professional Development, and Diversity and Inclusion.

The session ended with a frank discussion in light of the protests that have arisen in response to the horrific murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and other Black people throughout the U.S. As we told management, we need to see stronger and more specific efforts from the company to support our Black colleagues—in this moment, but also more broadly. Although well-intentioned gestures and words of sympathy from Condé Nast and New Yorker management are appreciated, the problems that plague the world, this country, and our own workplace are structural, not merely interpersonal. We’ve proposed concrete measures that will go a long way toward making our shop more equitable, more diverse, and more inclusive—i.e., safer for and more sensitive to the experiences of Black people and others from underrepresented groups in our office and in our industry. Management has welcomed some of those ideas—like the joint labor-management diversity-and-inclusion committee, which began meeting earlier this year—but they’ve rejected others, such as hiring and interview goals, which we put back on the table yesterday, and just cause, which, among other things, allows employees to raise concerns without fear of retaliation.

New Yorker Management’s response showed the limits of their individual perspectives: they suggested that we were “conflating” multiple issues, asked us to consider what would create “good will” during this difficult time, and encouraged unit members to reach out to middle and senior managers, clearly not understanding how hard it can be to do so.

As we’ve reiterated throughout our just-cause negotiations, no one’s judgment is infallible, and we don’t expect it to be—hence the necessity of structural remedies. Material change requires, along with honest communication, the redistribution of power. Of course, the fight is far bigger than what’s going on at The New Yorker, but we must also demand fairness and justice here.

+ May 27, 2020

We’ve been negotiating our contract since November, 2018. The process has been difficult, and the pandemic has made things more complicated for everyone. Our contract campaign is as urgent as ever, and the Bargaining Committee has been working hard to find the best way forward amid the current instability. In consultation with the Unit Council, we developed the idea of a short-term agreement—a condensed contract that we could negotiate on an expedited timeline and that would memorialize what we see as the most fundamental protections and provisions for the next twelve to eighteen months, after which we’d negotiate a more fulsome successor agreement. We approached this as a mutually beneficial project that would allow the union and the company to weather the coming year as partners, to gain experience living under a contract before committing to a full three-year term, and to return to the table when things are less chaotic. We floated it to management off the record—explaining that an agreement like this would, for us, have to include, among other things, language about Coverage and Jurisdiction (which we last presented on April 22nd) and Just Cause—and they said they were amenable to discussing it further.

Yesterday, we hoped to get an on-the-record commitment from management to fast-track bargaining on this short-term agreement. We began by offering a revised Just Cause proposal, which keeps our original language intact, but also makes a significant concession, affirmatively stating that, in arbitration, The New Yorker’s editorial standards would be presumed to be reasonable unless actively contested. (The company would have to prove that standards are consistently applied, that progressive discipline was used, that the employee was given opportunity to improve, etc., but the question of whether the standards themselves are reasonable would be presumed answered in the company’s favor, though there’s room for the Guild to rebut.) We intended this major move—unprecedented in the Guild’s history—to acknowledge and assuage management’s concerns, and to show that we’re serious about collaborating in earnest.

Management not only refused our olive branch but also took the opportunity to double down on their position that Just Cause is somehow an existential threat to The New Yorker—or, in other words, that the interests of The New Yorker as an institution are separate from the interests of the workers who make The New Yorker. We didn’t expect the company to accept our Just Cause proposal outright, but, for a short-term agreement to make sense for our members, we need indication of some buy-in to the concept—some assurance of job security and managerial accountability. Instead, the company confirmed an unwillingness to open discipline-related decisions to external review of any kind, even for a twelve-month period.

All this means that we’re only fighting harder for #Contract2020. To that end, we also put forth a number of counter-proposals to keep the negotiations moving forward for a full-term contract: Diversity and Inclusion, Social Media, Holidays, Expenses and Equipment, and Vacation and Paid Time Off. Management once again arrived empty-handed, claiming they’d been planning to “listen.”

+ May 13, 2020

Just before our bargaining session on May 13th, Roger Lynch sent his e-mail announcing layoffs across Condé. We’re relieved to confirm that, as some of you may have heard from your supervisors, from us, or through the grapevine, The New Yorker is not expected to face any staff reductions at this time. We and our fellow Guild members at Condé have released a joint statement and are brainstorming ways to support colleagues at brands affected by these cuts.

The news delayed our session a bit, but we presented the following counter-proposals:

• Guild Association Rights: Protects the conduct of NewsGuild business in the shop—regular membership meetings, union communication channels, and execution of Guild work.
• Professional Development: Establishes a framework for informal, non-disciplinary, employee-initiated conversations with managers and supervisors, on an annual basis.
• Privacy: Prevents the company from surveilling employees and enshrines a policy regarding employees’ use of social media.

Management showed up empty-handed, claiming that they’ve been too busy to develop counters to any currently outstanding proposals—including our proposal about N.D.A.s, which we first presented in November. On April 22nd, hoping to move the conversation forward, we offered to drop the retroactive elements of our proposal and end only the future use of harassment-related N.D.A.s at Condé; in light of this concession, we emphasized our expectation that the company respond in a timely fashion. That they’ve failed to do so is unacceptable, especially since they insist that our proposal reflects the intent of the new corporate “policy.” The problem with that policy is that it doesn’t eliminate N.D.A.s entirely, as the company’s press release touted and the press then widely reported, but on a “case-by-case” basis, leaving the company to adjudicate what constitutes a “good faith” claim of harassment or discrimination. Our language, which has been adopted in other Guild shops without controversy, would prevent the company from silencing any victims in the future, and although management has reiterated that they don’t want the exception to swallow the rule, they keep doubling down on the exception anyway. It’s troubling to see the specter of false accusation take priority over accountability, especially at The New Yorker; as we told management at the virtual table, we think the public would agree.

Like the N.D.A. policy, yesterday’s layoff announcement was a bombshell that the company dropped before bothering to notify the Guild. This is a union shop, which means we have a right to negotiate the terms and conditions of our employment. We’ve fought for our seat at the table, but we must demand that the company respect it.

To demonstrate our union’s solidarity around the issue of N.D.A.s, we will gather virtually on Tuesday, May 19th, to take a group photo via Zoom.

+ April 22, 2020

We met with management remotely this morning for another bargaining session. Here are the highlights:

• The company presented counters to our Diversity and Inclusion, Hiring, and Anti-Harassment proposals.
• We presented revised proposals on the following:
  • Coverage and Jurisdiction: The language we’ve proposed provides a form of job security by defining bargaining-unit work and preventing the company from assigning that work in ways that could undermine or dilute the bargaining unit. A T.A. on this proposal will mark significant progress toward our contract. (We last proposed this on February 5th; the updated language we offered today reflects developments from a more recent Pitchfork bargaining session.)
  • Non-Disclosure Agreements: The policy Condé Nast recently announced would stop the use only of NDAs regarding “good faith” claims of harassment or discrimination on a case-by-case basis; management has not adequately answered our questions about who will determine what constitutes a “good faith” claim, and based on what criteria. Today, in the interest of moving the conversation forward, we offered a deal: if the company will unequivocally accept the prospective aspects of the proposal we made in November, and agree that NO future claims of discrimination or harassment will be subject to NDAs, then we will drop our retroactive demands, and not require the company to release existing NDAs. This is not a move we take lightly, especially since other Guild shops have managed to secure the language we originally proposed in its entirety—and especially given The New Yorker’s groundbreaking reporting on this subject. We conveyed that our members feel strongly about this issue, and asked management to let us know ASAP whether they will do the right thing.

Currently, our next session is planned for Wednesday, May 13th, and we are trying to schedule additional dates in May. We’re eager to move things along, so we need management to engage in bargaining for more than a few hours once or twice a month. We realize that everyone is preoccupied, but management has acknowledged that, now more than ever, your dedication and hard work make The New Yorker possible, and we believe that they owe it to each of you to make bargaining our first contract a top priority.

Finally, some good news: we’re excited to welcome our colleagues at WIRED to the NewsGuild! They went public today, making WIRED the fourth Condé Nast publication to unionize.

+ April 14, 2020

Yesterday morning (Monday, April 13th), the bargaining committee met with management for our second remote bargaining session. Here are the highlights:

• We presented our Job Descriptions proposal, which offers descriptions for all existing bargaining-unit jobs at The New Yorker, based on data our bargaining committee gathered from unit members via surveys and conversations. This proposal would also require the company to negotiate with the union in order to make any substantive changes to bargaining-unit employees’ roles and responsibilities.
• We presented counter-proposals on Diversity and Inclusion—which seems very close to a tentative agreement—and Hiring.
• The company presented a counter to our proposal on Social Media, which has to do with intellectual property and ownership of social-media accounts. (Not to be confused with our Privacy proposal, which relates more to how employees use their personal social-media accounts.)
• We reached an agreement on the terms of transitioning part-time G.E.S. employees onto staff. We’re told that this conversion will be effective Monday, April 20th. We’ll be following up directly with the individuals affected.
• Since working from home is requiring many of us to make use of personal equipment and to go without office resources—such as high-speed internet connections, computers with necessary processing power, printers, and even ergonomic chairs—we asked how the company intends to provide or reimburse for the things we need to do our jobs effectively. Management and H.R. said that employees should speak to their managers or department heads—if you do not have something that you need to do your job reasonably efficiently, please make a clear request to your manager to have the company provide it for you or to reimburse you for it. (Note: you should work out any plans for reimbursement with your manager before you make a purchase.) If you have problems getting what you need to do your job, please let us know!

We also briefly discussed Monday’s e-mail from Roger Lynch, which, as you probably know, described measures being taken to cut costs throughout Condé Nast, including temporary salary reductions for those making more than $100K annually; reduced work hours and work-week schedules for certain roles; and some role eliminations, as a last option. We’re waiting to hear specifics about how these moves might affect The New Yorker and union members—including those affected by the aforementioned salary reductions—but we’re told that the focus is currently on high-earning individuals, in order to avoid additional cuts. Decisions about further steps will likely be made before the end of May, and Condé and The New Yorker will have to consult with the union before implementing any reductions or changes.

We’ll be in touch as we learn more, but, as always, if you have questions or concerns, please reach out to your union reps. Our next bargaining session is Wednesday, April 22nd.

+ March 26, 2020

As you know, before COVID-19 hit NYC in full force, we were entering a critical phase in negotiating our union’s first contract. Now, even as everyone continues to adjust to new circumstances, in work and life alike, the Bargaining Committee is determined to keep our contract talks moving forward. Over the past couple of weeks, you’ve all achieved some truly miraculous feats in getting the magazine and site published remotely—you deserve not only praise for your work but also a robust contract that reflects the indisputable value of your labor. We sincerely appreciate all the support and guidance that New Yorker managers have provided during this fraught time, as well as their willingness to work with us to keep bargaining on course. Yesterday morning (Wednesday, March 25th), we met with management over Zoom for our very first remote bargaining session.

Here’s what went down at the virtual table:

• Management expressed pride and gratitude for how the staff has responded to these extraordinary conditions, acknowledging that what we’ve accomplished both in print and online wouldn’t be possible without your dedication, expertise, and ingenuity.
• As far as workflow goes, management confirmed that management is in a constant state of assessment and reassessment: they realize that everyone is dealing with individual situations and stresses (childcare, elder care, and spouses/roommates losing income, among many other issues, including general fear and anxiety) that affect our emotional and mental health, our availability, and our productivity. We were happy to hear that the company understands these concerns and that it is committed to flexibly accommodating employees’ needs.
• We briefly discussed Confidentiality and Protection of Sources, as well as Non-Disclosure Agreements. TL;DR is that management is still holding on to the idea they must have final say or determination when adjudicating these issues.
• The Guild made a proposal about Reductions in Force, which outlines a process the company would have to follow in the event of layoffs due to economic reasons. (Note: we had planned to propose this language before the coronavirus crisis, but the current climate makes such a provision—which is standard in all NewsGuild contracts—even more important. Also, layoffs are different from disciplinary dismissals, so this proposal is separate from the concept of just cause.)
• Finally, we asked about the status of our common-review raises, which management had previously threatened to withhold. Weeks ago, pre-corona, we challenged this as a violation of the status quo, and the company said that it would reconsider, but never followed up. Yesterday morning, management said that they still have not determined whether they intend to distribute these raises. Although we obviously recognize that things have been chaotic, we would have thought that our members’ exceptional work in these extremely difficult times should make this decision a no-brainer—especially since The New Yorker already has the money for this year’s increases in hand from Condé. We hope to hear soon that management will choose to do the right thing.

We’ll let you know as soon as we’ve got our next bargaining date on the calendar. We look forward to seeing all of your faces, “Hollywood Squares” style, tomorrow (Friday) at 5. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to any of us with questions, concerns, or just to chat. More than ever, we’re here for you.

+ February 26, 2020

We met with management for a fairly productive bargaining session this morning. Here are today’s highlights.

• After Friday’s announcement that Condé Nast intends to eliminate the use of nondisclosure agreements related to harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, and release such existing NDAs on a “case-by-case basis,” we expected to sign a tentative agreement on the NDA proposal our bargaining committee presented back in November. We did not. The company does not feel they have an obligation to bargain with the Guild over this, but we maintain that it is an issue of workplace safety, and therefore a mandatory subject of bargaining. This new standard must be enshrined in our contract, not merely in an unenforceable corporate policy that could change at any time.
• We received and discussed the company’s counters to our proposals on Holidays, Leaves of Absence, and Professional Development, as well as their long-awaited proposal for converting part-time GES employees to staff.

As you may have noticed, the pace of negotiations has been picking up, and we’re excited to begin tackling some big-ticket items—including job descriptions, career advancement, and, yes, wages—soon. We’ll be back at the table on March 11 and March 25. Mark your calendars—and remember to come by the kitchen in the morning for details and a bagel!

+ February 13, 2020

We met management again for bargaining today—thanks to all who came and observed. We’ll offer a bargaining update (and more!) at our membership meeting tomorrow at 1 P.M. in the large conference room on 23. In the meantime, here’s the rundown:

• We achieved a T.A. (tentative agreement) on Training! This provision will guarantee training for new hires and for employees who are changing roles, including opportunities for mentorship and shadowing.
• We also received, and responded to, management’s counters to our proposals on Privacy; Diversity and Inclusion; and Vacation and Paid Time Off.
• After a caucus (and some pressure from the committee), management also presented counter-proposals on Expenses and Equipment and Hiring; we also discussed Social Media and Confidentiality and Protection of Sources.
• We’ve spent many hours over many months discussing the issue of just cause. Over the course of these conversations, management have maintained that a standard of due process for employees would diminish The New Yorker’s editorial standards. However, our bargaining committee feels strongly that if the company demands we waive our right to recourse in cases of unfair discipline or dismissal, we cannot concede our legally-protected right to take job actions. Therefore, today, we withdrew our response to the company’s No-Strike No-Lockout proposal, letting them know that we do not intend to ratify a contract that includes such a provision unless it also guarantees us just cause—no exception.

Altogether, it was a productive session. We’ll be back at the table on February 26th—mark your calendars—and we look forward to seeing you at tomorrow’s membership meeting.

+ February 5, 2020

Dear colleagues,

Thanks to everyone who came to observe bargaining this morning! Your presence made a huge difference. We’ll hold a bargaining update at 11 A.M. tomorrow in the kitchen on 23, but here’s a brief rundown on today’s progress.

• We reached a tentative agreement (TA) on Grievance and Arbitration!
  • This language lays out a process for raising complaints regarding the application of our contract, including a series of progressive steps for resolving a dispute.
  • This process includes ample opportunity to address grievances without going to arbitration, which is a final step that would only be taken if a dispute could not be otherwise resolved.
• The Guild presented three additional counter-proposals regarding Hiring; Diversity and Inclusion; and Privacy—all issues on which the two sides of the table seem to be nearing agreement.
• The Guild put forth revised language regarding Coverage, Jurisdiction, and Contracting (which, in a nutshell, is meant to protect the bargaining unit and prevent unit work from being outsourced to managers and freelancers).
• We also received the company’s counter-proposals on Training and Vacation and Paid Time Off, and, during a caucus, formulated our responses. By the time we presented these counters, only Patrick Butler (the company’s outside counsel) and a paralegal remained from management’s bargaining committee—all the New Yorker managers had gone back to work—but we hope to finalize these items within our next couple of sessions.

Mark your calendars:

• Our next bargaining session will be on Thursday, February 13th—same time, same place (most likely).
• We’ll be holding a lunchtime membership meeting on Friday, February 14th (Valentine’s Day!).
• We also hope to see you tonight at the NewsGuild of New York for our local-wide winter membership meeting!

As always, if you want to know more, or just want to talk, find any member of the bargaining committee or the unit council—we’re here for you.

+ January 21, 2020

Hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend.

We returned to the office today to find that New Yorker management had directed building services to tear down the just-cause posters we’d hung around the office, which expressed, in unit members’ own words, the need for fairness and accountability in our workplace. At the table this morning, management defended their decision to have the posters removed and doubled down on their resistance to the concept of just cause—unsurprising, but still disappointing. Although the posters clearly made an impression on management, they remain unwilling to provide due process for employees, which means that we’ll have to keep pushing.

THANK YOU to everyone who came to observe the session and carried copies of the posters—your presence reminded management whose voices they are trying to silence, and our bargaining committee appreciated your show of support. It’s important to remember that actions like these, uncomfortable as they may be, are critical to winning the contract our union needs and deserves. We’re all in this together!

In addition to the just-cause conversation, we gave management three counter-proposals:

• Grievances and Arbitration
• Training
• Vacation and Paid Time Off

We appear to be nearing agreement on all of these, and we’re eager to move the ball forward on other issues while the just-cause fight continues. We’ll offer a bargaining update in the kitchen tomorrow morning (Tuesday, 1/22) in the kitchen on 23 if you’d like more details. Our next sessions are February 5th, 13th, and 26th—mark your calendars, and stay tuned for what’s next!

+ January 8, 2020

This morning, we met with management for our first bargaining session of 2020. Thank you to all who observed! We spent most of our time at the table discussing everyone’s favorite subject: just cause.

In December, management responded to our single-sentence just-cause proposal with a proposal titled “Discharge and Discipline” that would effectively invalidate the concept of just cause. It included:

• an unenforceable commitment to a "fair and transparent process" for providing feedback to employees;
• language that would instate a system of performance reviews tied to discipline;
• a waiver of arbitration regarding discipline and discharge;
• a 12-month probationary period during which new employees would be exempt from our contract’s grievance-and-arbitration provisions.

We found this unacceptable and, today, countered with two proposals:

• Just cause, which further fleshes out our original proposal without weakening its intent;
• Professional development, which would provide opportunities for employees to meet with and receive feedback from their managers that would not be used for disciplinary purposes.

The resulting negotiations retreaded some familiar territory, but there was a slight shift. Past conversations have focussed largely on management’s concerns that the possibility of arbitration will weaken The New Yorker’s editorial standards, assuming that management’s judgment is essentially infallible. Today, several Bargaining Committee members raised the question of what happens when management is in the wrong—and the point that a manager who disciplines and fires workers unfairly would pose a greater threat to the magazine than any arbitrator or bargaining-unit employee ever could. Management acknowledged the validity of our position, but didn’t concede theirs—we’ll need to keep fighting to secure the basic worker protections we need.

To hear more details, join us for a bargaining-update bagel breakfast at 11 A.M. tomorrow (Thursday, January 9th) in the kitchen on 23. Our next bargaining session is Tuesday, January 21st—mark your calendars. As always, let us know if you have any questions!

+ December 20, 2019

Thanks to all who came to observe our last bargaining session of 2019. We made some good progress today—we received and discussed the company’s counters to our proposals on training; vacation and P.T.O.; and diversity and inclusion. We seem to be nearing agreement on all of these issues. We’ll offer an in-person update tomorrow at 3:30pm in the kitchen, but here are some takeaways from today’s negotiations.

• Training: We’ve proposed language related to new hires, employees transitioning to new roles, and cross-training, including an expectation that managers will instruct employees as how to prioritize different assignments. Management countered with language that would take the onus off of managers and “empower” employees to ask how they should prioritize their work. We maintain that management should accept the responsibility of proactively managing their employees.
• Vacation and P.T.O.: Our outstanding disputes surrounding vacation and P.T.O. has to do with carrying over and paying out unused vacation days. We’ve proposed that employees be allowed to carry over up to one week of unused vacation time per year, and that employees leaving the company be paid out for unused, accrued vacation days. Management wants the one-week carryover to be contingent on good cause (illness, work demands, etc.) and at managers’ discretion, and they did not agree to a payout policy at this time. We feel that P.T.O. is a form of compensation employees shouldn’t have to forfeit, and scheduling roll-over time shouldn’t pose a problem if managers do their jobs.
• Diversity and Inclusion: Management struck some language we’d proposed related to accountability, but confirmed at the table that they’re not rejecting these provisions—rather, they’re considering them in light of conversations happening more broadly within Condé Nast. They couldn’t speak to the substance or timeline of these conversations, which is mildly problematic because policies related to D&I are mandatory subjects of bargaining.

A shop paper will be issued tonight with an update on our just cause fight, and we’ll be putting up signs throughout the office reflecting on why just cause is important to our members. We’ll also be gathering for a union photo this Friday, December 13th at 3:00 in front of the New Yorker sign on 23 (by the elevators). Show your solidarity by wearing your union button—not only for the photo, but also for the Condé Nast and New Yorker holiday parties this Thursday and Friday!

+ December 3, 2019

We resumed bargaining this morning, and here are some highlights.

• Just Cause: We received the company’s written response to our just-cause proposal today, under the heading “discharge and discipline." Their counter was disappointing and confusing; it would instate systems for annual reviews and performance-improvement plans, but would provide no assurance of due process for an employee who feels they’ve been unfairly discharged, nor any protection against unfair discipline or discharge. Essentially, management maintains that all editorial and personnel decisions should lie unilaterally and incontrovertibly with David Remnick—who, again, has not attended bargaining since our first session over a year ago.
• We also presented counterproposals on:
  • Vacation and PTO—on which we seem to be nearing agreement;
  • Diversity and Inclusion—which memorialized verbal agreements made at our previous session;
  • Training—which we hope will provide a framework for further discussion by the Partnership Committee.

We’ll be back at the table next Tuesday morning, December 10; as always, we encourage everyone to come observe. Also, in addition to tomorrow’s bargaining update, we hope you’ll join us at the Guild holiday party tomorrow evening, which starts at 6:30pm at Stitch Bar & Lounge! We look forward to celebrating with you.

+ November 20, 2019

Yesterday morning’s bargaining session was productive in many ways and difficult in others. As always, HUGE thanks to everyone who attended. Here are some highlights:

• Management presented counters to our proposals regarding: Grievance and Arbitration; Privacy; and Diversity and Inclusion.
• Diversity and Inclusion: We made some progress yesterday, largely thanks to a powerful presentation on behalf of our union’s Inclusion Committee, which many of you gathered to witness. Most importantly, we got management to agree to some real measures of accountability and to empower the joint labor-management diversity and inclusion committee that will be up and running soon. We’re still working to enshrine management’s assurances in the contract, but this is a positive development.
• Just Cause: Management again declined to present a just-cause counterproposal. To convey the seriousness of this issue, we read some testimonials from former New Yorker employees that emphasize the need for due process in our workplace. Management responded defensively—they conceded a lack of transparency, teasing a future proposal regarding performance reviews and progressive discipline, but doubled down on their resistance to just cause as a concept. They don’t think their standards for determining discipline should be reviewable. Yesterday's discussion only made clearer how crucial it is to have unequivocal just-cause language in our contract: we need to show management how much this issue matters to us, and that we won’t back down, so get ready to get involved.

+ November 12, 2019

We met management at the bargaining table this morning, one year to the date since we began the collective bargaining process. Huge thanks to everyone who came to observe today—it was powerful to have so many of our members present, and it definitely made an impression on management. We’ll offer a recap of the session at our anniversary party this evening, but here are some major takeaways:

• Last week, we specifically invited David Remnick to join us at the table for this session, as he has not attended bargaining since our first session, a year ago. He did not show up.
• We did not receive a counterproposal from the company regarding just cause, although we again discussed the issue extensively. It was made clear to us that New Yorker management remains deeply resistant to our demands for transparency, accountability, and due process (which they see as a threat to their authority).
• We presented three new proposals:
  • Health and Welfare (preventing the company from raising employees’ healthcare costs or changing providers without bargaining first);
  • Anti-Harassment (memorializing current policies surrounding harassment, and insuring Guild representation for unit members in any harassment-related meetings or conversations);
• Prohibition of Non-Disclosure Agreements for Sexual Harassment and Discrimination (preventing the company from silencing employees as a condition of settlements, and releasing all current and former employees from existing NDAs), which anticipates a new industry standard directly inspired by Ronan Farrow’s reporting for The New Yorker.
• We received counterproposals from management regarding:
  • Privacy;
  • Vacation and PTO;
  • No-Strike/No-Lockout (which we’ve renamed “Labor Peace”).
• We countered management’s counterproposal on privacy, which we feel connects strongly with just cause, and we also presented two other counterproposals, regarding Grievances+Arbitration and Diversity+Inclusion.

Today’s conversation was, in many ways, illuminating and productive, but we’re still very far from where we need to be. After a year of negotiations, it’s evident that in order to reach a contract, we have to turn up the heat. We’ll be back at the table next Tuesday, November 19, and we hope to see all of you there. In the meantime, we’re excited to raise a glass to all of you, and to our unity, tonight!

+ October 30, 2019

Yesterday's bargaining session was a frustrating one. Last time we met with management, on October 15th, we had an extensive discussion about our just-cause proposal (a proposal saying the TNY employees cannot be fired for no reason, and putting in place a formal process for dismissal). We were disappointed to not get a response two weeks later. Management arrived at the table this Tuesday, October 29th, empty-handed; instead of bringing us concrete language memorializing their concerns, they offered only further vague assurances that this issue matters to them.

This dance has been par for the course throughout negotiations—management professes lofty values, but then follows through minimally, under duress, or not at all—and we are reaching a boiling point. We’ve been bargaining for nearly a year—since November 12, 2018—and we have very little to show for it. Management has denied our bargaining committee adequate time to prepare proposals and declined to meet for full-day bargaining sessions; at our too-brief and too-infrequent meetings, they have consistently demonstrated a lack of real engagement with our proposals. They continue to pat themselves on the backs for proposing the G.E.S. transition, but have repeatedly cancelled and postponed the small-group meetings that are the next step in putting that transition into effect. The company suggested yesterday, as they have in the past, that they will begin to actually prioritize bargaining when we introduce wage proposals—but that’s not only unsatisfactory, it’s also an insult to this committee and to everyone we represent.

From the beginning, we’ve been raising issues that matter deeply to our members, and management keeps feeding us the same line: that The New Yorker’s operations are unique and its standards uniquely high, and making time for negotiations will undercut those. Management claims full-day bargaining sessions will hinder our ability to put out an issue every week; but meanwhile, every issue and article this company produces currently relies on underpaid labor by workers who lack basic job security, and, in many cases, health care. Are these acceptable circumstances for a leading institution of the liberal media industry?

When we voiced our exasperation in more vehement terms than we have before, management’s defensive response was telling. They did not substantively address our complaints about caucus time, bargaining time, or just cause; instead, they bristled at a perceived accusation that they might be acting in bad faith, and expressed consternation that they are being cast as “villains.” Put simply: they seem more interested in making clear that they have good intentions than in making the changes that our workplace needs.

During a break, our bargaining committee developed two counterproposals—one regarding vacation and paid time off, and the other regarding no strike/no lockout language. When we reconvened, management’s committee had not composed a counterproposal on just cause, and all of the New Yorker managers on the committee had absconded, leaving their outside counsel, Advance Legal lawyer, and HR rep. It was a disheartening end to the day’s events.

Our next bargaining session is scheduled for November 12—a year to the date since we started the bargaining process.

+ October 15, 2019

Today's conversation hinged largely on a single sentence. The Bargaining Committee put forth a new “just cause” proposal that reads, in its entirety, "There shall be no discipline except for just and sufficient cause." In effect, this language provides members of our union recourse in the event that they are unfairly punished or terminated. Seems straightforward enough—but management has resisted this concept, and it's troubling. Once again, we are asking them to memorialize their professed values and standards, and, once again, they're objecting. Simply put, the company wants to retain all its power—but the purpose of a union is to make sure workers are not powerless.

Needless to say, we have no intention of ratifying a contract that does not include just cause—especially since the company can and will propose what's called a "management's rights" clause, carving out whatever specific prerogatives they'd like to keep once the contract goes into effect. (Like every other part of the contract, this will have to be negotiated, too.) Transparency and fairness have been critical goals of The New Yorker Union from the very beginning; part of the reason we chose to organize with the NewsGuild was its strong position and great track record when it comes to just cause. It's not only industry standard; it's also what's right, and we'll all need to work together to fight for it—stay tuned for upcoming actions.

+ September 10, 2019

Below is a summary of Tuesday’s negotiations:

We presented three counter-proposals today, regarding holidays, leaves of absences, and expenses and equipment, and introduced an hours-of-work proposal (including pay differentials for late, early, and on-call shifts). Broadly, the company remains hesitant to codify processes, even those that are already informally in place. Some of these proposals seem, to use management’s term, “aspirational,” such as student-loan assistance and thirty-two weeks paid parental leave, but they are based on serious and strategic considerations of how to improve retention and equity. Even as the company’s representative cited administrative and operational concerns, he repeatedly acknowledged that unit members’ extraordinary talents, skills, and knowledge are not easily replaced. Therefore, our contract must reflect the value of these “unique” and “non-fungible” workers to the company.

The tone was productive today, and we were able to have some substantive conversations around the proposals we brought to the table. We’re eager for the company to really engage with our proposals—instead of rejecting them wholesale or replacing them with language that gives the management “sole discretion.” Likewise, the company is overeager to receive our proposals on wages, to which end we requested more frequent and longer bargaining sessions, which will undoubtedly help to move the process along. We are making progress, but we’re ready to ramp up the pace and get a contract in place.

+ August 13, 2019

Thank you to everyone who came to observe bargaining this morning! It was great to have so many members present for today's negotiations, especially as we discussed matters relating to GES.

We came to the table prepared with questions about management's recent proposal regarding GES employees' transition onto Condé Nast staff, but we inquired first about the status of the "common review" raises for which those employees are STILL waiting. Their response was unacceptable: management seem to believe that in light of their new proposal, they are no longer obligated to honor the agreement we reached with them on March 29, which stated that all members of the bargaining unit hired before 10/1/2018 would receive these increases (apart from a few specified exceptions). We do appreciate the proposal and intend to craft a thorough response, but in the meantime, we maintain that management must follow through on the commitment they've already made, which shouldn't have any bearing on what they've now proposed. Our colleagues have been waiting for their money more than long enough, and management's resistance here makes us wonder about the weight of their word at the table. How can we trust them to uphold our eventual contract when they're backpedaling on this relatively simple, straightforward agreement?

We let management know that, as per the terms of that March 29 agreement, we're ready to pursue arbitration if they continue to delay these raises. However, it's crucial that we also respond within the shop—our power as a union comes from our members, not from an outside institution. We've hung a few calendars throughout the office tallying the number of days GES raises have been withheld since they were promised, and we're working on another action that will memorialize your commitment to and solidarity with our colleagues.

+ August 13, 2019

Happy Monday! We met management at the table again this morning; highlights from today’s negotiations are below:

First, we touched base about the status of the GES common-review raises. Management revealed that they’re in the process of developing a proposal to bring most, if not all, GES employees onto staff. We see this shift as a victory that’s a result of our union’s demands to bargain collectively and to be treated equally as employees, and we expect it to be a positive change that we can now negotiate to happen as smoothly and beneficially as possible. Although we don’t have any details yet—we won’t be able to begin discussing them until management puts an actual proposal on the table—we definitely want to make sure (and management said they do, too) that the move to staff doesn’t adversely affect any of our members, either financially or with regard to schedule, work arrangement, visa status, etc. We’re also fighting to make sure that our members currently employed by GES are taken care of in the interim, including that they receive compensation for those raises that were supposed to be effective as of March 24. We expect to see management’s proposal by mid-July, and we’ll be following up throughout the shop to make sure everything is handled appropriately.

Then, management brought us their responses to our proposals about holidays, expenses/equipment, leaves of absence, and vacation/PTO. Although our language was hardly extreme, management largely rejected it in favor of the policies currently in place—either those officially mandated by Condé Nast or those unspoken/unwritten within The New Yorker. In some cases, they even suggested that certain benefits presently available to some employees might not be guaranteed in our contract—such as meals and cabs home for people working late-night shifts, which we explicitly included in our expenses proposal—and repeatedly invoked proposals we have yet to make surrounding wages and benefits, continuing to imply that most everything else will be weighed against those economic items. However, it's important to remember that bargaining is not a unilateral process—we have to agree to all terms of the contract, as does management. To their now-familiar line that accountability could come at the expense of flexibility in the workplace, we reiterated that any trade-off management deems necessary, they propose at their own discretion: our goal is still to preserve the benefits of our workplace’s unique culture while insuring that no one is exploited or taken advantage of, and we still reject the premise that those things are mutually exclusive. We intend to keep bargaining in good faith, and to craft (counter-) proposals that reflect the needs and values of our members as well as of the magazine.

+ August 13, 2019

Here are the highlights.

• When the "common review" raises were reflected on the May 17th payroll, GES employees didn't receive any increase on their paychecks that week. Shortly after, management acknowledged their error and estimated that GES employees would receive the money to which they are entitled by mid-June. But the message today was different. Stacy Marcus (of Advance Legal) said the company is working on a “proposal” that they hope to have developed by next week, but she couldn’t say what that plan was or when it might be implemented. To put it lightly, we’re extremely disappointed by management’s continual reversals and delays, and we'll keep pressing them to issue the raises they promised, and update everyone along the way.
• Regarding the economic proposals we put forward at our last session—paid time off, holidays, leaves of absence, tuition/student-loan assistance, and expenses/equipment—management and the company's representatives claimed, as they have repeatedly done throughout negotiations, that they are unable to respond without seeing the totality of our economic proposals (particularly ones about salaries). They didn’t respond to our five proposals with any mention of concrete economic or operational constraints, and things got especially heated when Patrick Butler (management’s counsel) falsely accused the Guild and the Bargaining Committee of presenting “unreasonable” proposals designed to trap management in an economically untenable situation—which is contradictory to our promise to bargain in good faith.
• Finally, we presented our counterproposals to management’s responses to hiring and diversity/inclusion. Although the company verbally agreed to develop a diversity partnership committee with members from the union and from management, they remain wary of anything resembling measurable goals or accountability metrics in this area. We’re glad that they’ve expressed a strong interest in committing to diversity and inclusion, but simply doing their best isn’t enough—this commitment must be practical and demonstrable.

THANK YOU to everyone who came to observe today—having so many of our members (almost 20!) present for these intense negotiations was a great show of solidarity, and reminded management who it is they’re really bargaining with.

+ May 22, 2019

This morning, the bargaining committee and management met for another productive round of negotiations. Read on for a brief recap, and be sure to stop by tonight’s happy hour, at Parm (down the block) at 6:15, for merriment and more details!

Before we turned to proposals, management’s counsel requested a sidebar with ours in order to discuss why the common review raises were not issued to GES employees. Although their counsel only cited, vaguely, “miscommunication” as the reason for this oversight, they confirmed that these raises will be issued to GES employees, with appropriate backpay, hopefully by mid-June. We’re disappointed by this oversight, which appears to be a result of disorganization on the company side. Nonetheless, we’re glad to have assurance that GES employees will indeed receive the money they’ve been promised and to which they’re entitled.

We then turned to management’s counter-proposals regarding hiring, diversity/ inclusion, and confidentiality/protection of sources. Management remains resistant to putting much detail in writing, especially with regard to hiring and diversity, preferring to rely largely on the forthcoming diversity and partnership committees to establish processes and practices. We do expect these working groups to tackle substantial and ongoing issues, but it’s important that the company—not these committees—retains the onus of accountability.

Finally, we offered new proposals related to holidays, leaves of absence, vacation/paid time off, expenses/equipment, and tuition/student loan assistance. These are the first proposals we’ve given them that are overtly economic in nature, and although management has been chomping at the bit to discuss economics, they had relatively little to say in response today. Instead, they reiterated their hesitance to comprehensively address these proposals until they have a chance to see all our economic (read: wage) proposals together, but we anticipate questions and, certainly, an compelling conversation about money when we next meet on the morning of June 4.

+ May 2, 2019

We had another bargaining session with management today. We got back counterproposals from management on Privacy and Social Media, and we discussed some concerns they had with our previous proposals on Hiring and Diversity & Inclusion. We're still working toward agreements on all four. We'll debrief in more detail at Tea with Tilley tomorrow, around 3:30 in the cafeteria, but here are a few important moments and takeaways:

Visa Support

Our discussions of hiring and diversity led to a conversation about immigration status and visa support for employees and prospective employees. Currently, TNY/Conde provides visa support to employees on a case-by-case basis; they explained today that with the current political climate, they have to decide individually whether to sponsor visas, based on the legal costs and the likelihood of success. Han spoke eloquently and personally about the present lack of transparency regarding access to this visa support—whether or under what circumstances it will be available, and to whom—and how it has impacted her and others in the office. We're going to keep working on fine-tuning this proposal to cut down on the uncertainty for our colleagues affected by this issue.

Philosophical Differences

In response to our ongoing conversations about privacy, social media, and confidentiality and protection of sources, the company mentioned a philosophical difference between the two sides that keeps arising in negotiations. We, the union, are continually making proposals that incorporate accessible, written versions of existing company policies, so that everyone in the office knows how things work, and to provide accountability. Management expressed their concern that committing these practices and procedures to writing will mean losing flexibility, but agreed that in some cases, it makes sense to do so because of how much the magazine has grown over the years. We think that memorializing past practices—and new and improved practices—in our contract is necessary for transparency, and we believe that we can arrive at language that provides transparency and accountability in general without inhibiting the company's ability to respond to specific situations.

+ April 22, 2019

We met with management this morning for another bargaining session. Here are the highlights:

• We reached another TA (tentative agreement), on our partnership committee proposal! This will establish a group comprised of representatives from management and from the unit who will work together to address issues in the shop.
• We discussed proposals and counters regarding: no-strike/no-lockout language, training, and hiring, all of which will entail further consideration and conversation. Management's response to our hiring proposal sparked a productive conversation about diversity, and why we think it's crucial to commit to benchmarks instead of just relying on best efforts.
• Finally, we returned to the question of caucus time (which the bargaining committee requires to develop proposals to present at the table). This continues to be a sticking point—we're still working to find a solution that addresses our needs as well as management's concerns. Management's bargaining committee did spend the first ninety minutes of today's scheduled bargaining session in their own caucus, illustrating how important it is to have dedicated time to prepare.

+ April 9, 2019

The Guild responded to management’s counterproposals regarding the Partnership Committee, Hiring, Training, and Privacy. The hiring discussion led us to present our Diversity and Inclusion proposal, the goal of which is to formalize, memorialize, and hold management accountable to their stated commitment to maintaining a diverse and inclusive workplace, and which includes language about hiring/recruitment, gender identity, immigration status, and sexual harassment. We expect management to have questions—such as one they raised today about the relationship between diversity/inclusion and style/editing/reporting decisions—but our goal is to see managerial efforts toward diversity/inclusion translate into tangible outcomes.

Our privacy proposal has been a source of interesting and ongoing conversation since we put it on the table. Our goal is to prevent employees from being disciplined at work for engaging in and expressing themselves on social media (and elsewhere) outside of work. We added related proposals, among others, that advocate for protecting employees’ personal social media accounts. It’s a tricky subject, but we want to move the focus of the discussion from management's reactive/punitive counterproposals to proactive/preventive guidelines.

+ March 29, 2019

Great news! Our action worked, and management won’t be holding up our annual raises for this year after all. That means that the cost-of-living-increase process will continue as it has in past years, with the addition—for the first time—of our GES (subcontracted) colleagues. Thanks so much for the show of solidarity on this issue; it made a noticeable difference at the table. Management said they were happy to have been able to work with us to come to an agreement. We are so thankful to all of you for the visible show of unity that made this a priority for them.

The tone during the meeting was positive and productive. We received responses to our proposals on hiring, training, privacy, and the Partnership Committee. The BC will review these responses and continue to negotiate.