Joint Statement from Guild-represented Newsrooms in Support of The New Yorker Union Digital Picket

Today The New Yorker Union announced a digital picket on the evening Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren were set to speak at The New Yorker Festival. Both congresswomen have agreed to decline their invitations to the festival in support of the union's fight for crucial Just Cause protections. The members of the editorial unions from Ars Technica, BuzzFeed News, New York Magazine, Pitchfork, Quartz, Wirecutter, and Ziff Davis stand in solidarity with the congresswomen and with the New Yorker Union.

Management at The New Yorker is refusing to agree to a Just Cause proposal in the union’s first collective bargaining agreement. Just Cause is a crucial element of any union contract, ensuring that journalists can do their jobs without fear of undue discipline or dismissal. As the New Yorker’s editorial staff has put it, “Inequality has long plagued our industry, and it won’t be solved by abstract commitments to fairness. At this moment of reckoning, we can rise to the occasion or relegate ourselves to the wrong side of history.” 

Instead of agreeing to this fundamental labor protection, The New Yorker’s management team is arguing for an undefinable “editorial exception” that nullifies the security Just Cause provides. Any sort of exception to Just Cause gives management unilateral control to fire at-will. The same coordinated effort to deny Just Cause, pushed by the same teams of corporate lawyers working for each company, is also happening at each of our bargaining tables.

We stand together, as members of the NewsGuild of New York, in demanding true Just Cause, without exceptions, for all of our coworkers, and to ensure that it remains enshrined as a standard in collective bargaining agreements as it has been for decades.