Vox union members walk out over stalled contract talks (Update: Scab tweets!) – By John Sexton (Hot Air) / June 6 2019
Vox media’s union members decided to walk out today over an ongoing contract dispute. The union tweeted out some reasons for the walkout along with photos of empty offices in New York:
Today‘s our last scheduled day of bargaining.@voxmediainc is still apart from us on:
– competitive wage scales
– strong guaranteed raises
– better severance
– subcontracting workWe’ve decided we’re not showing up to work today until we resolve these issues.
— Vox Media Union (@vox_union) June 6, 2019
Our unit members are taking their sites dark today to show management how important these issues are to us. Contract now. pic.twitter.com/q38NCZqGi4
— Vox Media Union (@vox_union) June 6, 2019
Vox Media isn’t just the political news site. They currently run six different sites: The Verge, Vox, SB Nation, Eater, Polygon, and Curbed. Bloomberg reports on how the walkout has affected those sites:
Hundreds of employees are participating in the action, according to the Writers Guild of America East, which represents the workers. They aren’t writing or editing stories, and no new articles have gone up on Vox.com…
Mike Prada, a union member and editor at Vox Media’s SBNation, said on Twitter the site won’t be providing coverage of Game 3 of the NBA finals on Thursday without “a fair contract.”
Yesterday, some of the writers at Vox (the politics site) were discussing the salaries they started at when they came to the company:
https://twitter.com/germanrlopez/status/1136287772795387904
I love Vox and I hate putting y'all on blast. But what I would hate more would be leaving the company without knowing for sure it's a place that would never do that again. We need a contract with fair minimums, now.
— Dara Lind (@DLind) June 5, 2019
But it sounds as if Lind did eventually get a raise. She says she’s not complaining about her current salary:
https://twitter.com/TabletopPHD/status/1136297774218076166
I don’t understand what she’s complaining about. They promised her salary would go up in time…and it did. Now she’s worried about other inexperienced writers like her? Why can’t they also work for a lower rate for a couple of years and then get a raise when they prove themselves? Why should they get the same money she’s earning now if they don’t know anything about journalism? Or is she suggesting they don’t deserve whatever she’s making now, just more than she made then? What is the wage that’s acceptable for new people with no experience? And if it’s 50,000 why isn’t it 60,000? I’d love to ask her these questions but I very much doubt I’d get answers.
Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff sent an email to employees expressing his disappointment at the walkout. “While paying people a lot more than market wages sounds great on the surface, it’s not realistic or smart,” he wrote.
I guess there are two outcomes here. One, the company can give in to the new salary demands and we can expect layoffs in six months. Or two, the company can say no to the demands thereby embittering all the progressives at Vox and associated brands.
Maybe some of the top-earning socialists at Vox (looking at you Matt Yglesias) will offer to take a pay cut so new people can make more than $30,000. Yeah, I sort of doubt it too. (Yglesias deleted his tweets after getting so negative feedback, so here’s a screenshot):
Anyway, Vox has stopped publishing progressive explainers for one day. That’s worth something. Unfortunate, the drive to de-platform right-wing people on YouTube, led by Vox’s Carlos Maza, continues despite the walkout:
https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1136661003159134208
Update: Beware of scab tweets!
https://twitter.com/dylanmatt/status/1136674462911422465
https://hotair.com/archives/2019/06/06/union-members-walk-vox-stalled-contract-talks/
