BREAKING: Gannett's Reviewed Union Walks Out on Prime Day

Members of the Reviewed Union, which represents workers at Gannett’s flagship consumer review site, will walk off the job on Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days event today in protest of management’s failure to schedule bargaining dates and revocation of overtime pay from hourly employees after the announcement of the union last year. The Reviewed Union is one of more than 50 Gannett bargaining units represented by The NewsGuild-CWA.

The more than 40 writers, editors, art, community, lab, and operations team members at the Gannett-owned e-commerce and product review outlet will walk out during the shopping holiday unless bargaining dates are provided and overtime pay restored. Workers are calling on shoppers to respect the “Click-it Picket Line” by refusing to interact with any of Reviewed’s Prime Day content during the walkout.

A supermajority of Reviewed workers voted to unionize with The NewsGuild-CWA in March 2023. Since then, Gannett management has stalled on setting bargaining dates at every turn, and seven months after the election, the company has still not held a single bargaining session. In September, workers filed an unfair labor practice (ULP) charge over Gannett’s unreasonable delay in providing requested information needed for bargaining.

Workers have also raised concerns about Gannett’s other union-busting tactics. Weeks after workers announced their intent to unionize late last year, management revoked overtime pay for hourly employees and laid off several members of the union.

In June, members walked off the job in protest of management’s retaliatory revocation of their transit reimbursement—an illegal unilateral change to conditions of employment during the status quo. Gannett began reimbursing for transit pass expenses almost immediately post-walkout.

Reviewed is a huge revenue driver for Gannett, particularly because of its coverage of e-commerce events like Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Reviewed staff start Prime Day coverage the second that sales kicks off in the early hours of the morning, and pump out articles for far longer than the typical work day without any additional overtime pay. October’s Prime Day marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season, which portends an even heavier workload, unreasonable conditions, and the same unjust pay, especially for hourly employees. 

“We expect management to comply with their legal obligation to meet us at the table to bargain a contract in good faith, a quality that has been distinctly lacking in their treatment of union members since we went public. We're walking out because management has unreasonably delayed bargaining for months by stalling their responses to our requests for information and proposed bargaining dates,” said Beckett Dubay, a Product Test Technician and member of the Lab and Operations Unit at Reviewed.

“I’m no chief executive. I’m just a simple country SEO editor. But I think a business runs best when its employees feel cared for and heard. For us, that means Gannett coming to the table to hammer out a fair contract. It also means restoring the overtime pay they curbed right after the union went public. It would be an important show of good faith after months of union busting and radio silence,” said Garrett Steele, SEO Updates Editor at Reviewed.

“When we stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow workers across Gannett, we know that we can beat back their union-busting and put an end to their all-out assault on the local news industry. We are particularly proud to stand in solidarity with our worker-comrades at Amazon, where thousands of warehouse and logistics workers are organizing in the face of rampant union-busting. Prime Day is only possible because of the long hours and back-to-back shifts Amazon’s workers put in—their fight is our fight, too,” said Sofia Tort, Operations Coordinator at Reviewed. 

Workers at Gannett have been raising the pressure on the company to invest in newsrooms and end its union-busting tactics. In June, reporters at two dozen newsrooms, including Reviewed, walked off the job on the day of Gannett’s annual shareholder meeting to call for a vote of no-confidence in CEO Mike Reed, citing his mismanagement of the company’s finances and failure to invest in local news coverage. 

For more information, check out the Reviewed Union website at reviewedunion.org or email us at reviewedunion@gmail.com.