How newsroom unions intervene when members get laid off

By Sara Guaglione

Newsrooms have been unionizing at a rapid pace in the past decade, especially since the pandemic began. But amid the wave of recent layoffs in the media sector, what are all these new unions doing now to help the hundreds of people that have been let go?

Unions can’t stop layoffs from happening — union members were recently laid off at Bustle Digital Group, Vox Media and The Washington Post. But unions can negotiate with management to try to mitigate the impact of a layoff, and to include contract provisions that offer union members equitable severance packages.

While each newsroom’s union contract differs, here are some of the ways unions represented by guilds in New York are addressing layoffs.

Pushing back

Fundamentally, newsroom unions can push back against layoffs announced by company management.

“One of the toughest aspects of doing union work is to confront layoffs,” said Lowell Peterson, executive director of the WGA-East, which is currently fighting layoffs at BuzzFeed, Vox and MSNBC.

If someone is laid off, rather than wondering why they got fired and if their severance package is fair in comparison to others, unions can collectively request information from management to find out why the company is enacting a layoff and to see if there is room for negotiation on the number of people being let go and if they can apply to other positions at the company, Peterson said.

“We spend hours and hours sitting across the bargaining table to save as many jobs as we can,” he said.

Vox Media’s union, for example, tweeted on Wednesday a list of questions they collected from members on the impact of recent layoffs, after over 20 members were let go. The questions range, asking what the company has done to prevent layoffs, if executives have taken pay cuts, what measures are being taken to prevent further layoffs and details on future hiring plans.

For formed unions that have not yet reached an agreed-upon contract (such as NBC News), a layoff is considered a “condition of employment” and would need to be negotiated before enacted, said Todd Vachon, director of the Labor Education Action Research Network (LEARN) at Rutgers University. Unions will often discuss with management the financials of the company to determine how many people need to be let go and if an option like furloughs is viable.

“Union jobs are more secure because they are able to negotiate these creative ways to save jobs,” Vachon said.

The Washington Post, for example, did not allow employees who were laid off to apply for another job at the company for over a year, said a person familiar with the details. The newsroom union fought back, and now employees can apply for jobs immediately, they said. The Washington Post did not immediately return a request for comment.