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The New Yorker has formed a union

307 points by knuththetruth 8y ago

sli 8y ago
> Our decision to unionize comes at a moment when much of what defines The New Yorker—its atmosphere of deliberation and care and its devotion to factual accuracy, careful prose, and expert design—is vulnerable to competing priorities from our corporate parent, Condé Nast. This is something that reddit users should also probably keep in mind as they use the site, as Condé Nast owns reddit as well.
- Mononokay 8y ago
  Actually, Condé Nast hasn't owned reddit for a long time.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    Who is the owner of reddit?
    - DougBTX 8y ago
      https://redditblog.com/2013/08/06/reddit-myth-busters/#independent-reddit-inc https://redditblog.com/2013/08/06/reddit-myth-busters/#indep...
      - baud147258 8y ago
        Thank you.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - icelancer 8y ago
    As of 2017 Advance Publications has been the majority shareholder, which also owns Condé Nast.
  - popcat 8y ago
    In effect, Condé Nast does still own Reddit. Advance Publications is the holding company which owns the Conde Nast properties (Conde Nast, Conde Nast International, Conde Nast Entertainment, and Reddit). When Condé Nast originally bought reddit, there was an outcry about how Condé Nast was going to ruin reddit. People thought Condé Nast was just going to pump their magazine content (GQ, Vogue, New Yorker, Wired, many more...) on reddit. In order to prove this wasn't going to happen, Conde Nast reincorporated Reddit as its own company and moved it under its parent holding company (Advance Publications). Advance Publications is to Conde Nast what Alphabet is to Google. Also one thing to note is that Reddit has employees within Conde Nast's head quarters. Its not like they are trying to hide their ownership. They just changed the structure of the ownership to prove Reddit still controls Reddit.
DanBlake 8y ago
My first instinct reading this was to think about the gothamist/dnainfo kerfuffle. However, Checking the new yorkers revenue shows around 200 million/yr, I definitely did not expect that and likely means it can easily support a union. (unless the new yorker is loaded with debt, which it might be)
- philipodonnell 8y ago
  Not taking a position either way, but revenue is not the important number here: its excess margin, which in publishing is extremely low.
  - heyyyouu 8y ago
    And the New Yorker has a history of being notorious for expenses -- at its height it had writers paid on contract for a full year that write one story (an excellent story, but still), expense accounts through the roof, and an editorial staff that none could rival. Those specific days are gone but its cost structure is still above what many other publications have, so I suspect the margins are still well below average. I love the New Yorker (it went off track for a while, but it's gotten much better in the past 10 years) and what they do takes serious investment and talent, but there's also ways to do it smartly. Although it looks like all of this is preemptive so we'll have to see where it goes.
    - philipodonnell 8y ago
      That may be true, but if the margins were low because the excessive expenses were due to paying people too much (per your example), then a union trying to raise wages might be the last thing they need to survive. :-)
      - hpcjoe 8y ago
        Back in my day, you raised wages when you could demonstrate success in your endeavor to drive more revenue/margin. You got paid less when you drove costs higher. Seems like this is a basic law of economics or something. Monetary rewards for success, monetary losses for failures. Unions have a tendency to be out of sync with this, which means their objectives aren't aligned with managements. Which ... never ... ends well.
yasp 8y ago
Increasing labor costs and reducing employment flexibility at companies that already have notoriously poor business fundamentals? Can't wait to see how that plays out.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  The reduced flexibility worries me far more than the cost. I've worked in union workplaces. There's always some instances of doing nothing (or doing busy work) because the nobody who's allowed to do whatever needs to be done is available and the other people who could do it won't because they're not allowed to do that job. When that happens regularly there's ripples through the workplace culture and work ethic and quality nose dive. I hope the union treads lightly and carefully. If they go full on public transit rail-workers union on day one it's gonna end badly.
  - pranjalv123 8y ago
    Why would a editorial staff union be managed the same way as a public transit rail-workers union? Wouldn't a better example be one of the many already existing creative workers unions, like the WGA, CWA, or Newspaper guild?
  - stnmtn 8y ago
    Forgive me for being flippant, but yes, if a union of writers acts like a bad example of how unions are supposed to act, the union of writers will be bad But why would you say that? It feels very defeatist to me to do something like that
  - lovich 8y ago
    I dont need a union to work at a job where I am not allowed to fix things because "thats not your job" so we sit around for hours because some critical system is down. Everything youve described I have experienced in non union shops, so its not a unique characteristic of unions
- ordinaryradical 8y ago
  Just curious: what are the New Yorkers "notoriously poor business fundamentals"? Haven't they been one of the most long-running, profitable print magazines in America?
projectileboy 8y ago
I’m always wary of unintended consequences, but I hope this works out for the staff, while not sinking the magazine. The New Yorker has been consistently producing some of the best long form journalism, as well as some of the best public policy thinkpieces.
- twooclock 8y ago
  I couldn't agree more. Some of their stories are masterpieces of journalism and they cover broad spectrum as well (style, tech, finance, literature...). I guess they are really unique.
dopamean 8y ago
Good for them. I hope that this works out well for both parties (labor and management). I'm curious about the details. I believe that in New York if a union negotiates your contract you are legally obliged to be a member of that union and incur whatever costs are associated (dues). My mother is a labor relations specialist for NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) and she is very concerned about a coming SCOTUS ruling that would remove that legal obligation. How does The New Yorker's new union plan to deal with that if/when it comes?
- dibstern 8y ago
  Forced membership of a union!? Seriously!? How awful. I’d rather quit than have it forced on me. If I was at the New Yorker I’d almost certainly join, but only if I could do so willingly. Ugh.
  - hbosch 8y ago
    “Forced membership” is a way to maintain the union’s power.
    - glibgil 8y ago
      Membership is the power. If no one is a member, there is no power
      - kevstev 8y ago
        Yeah, but when the union head starts paying themselves 300k and despite good living wages and benefits still maintain a large/expensive organizational structure and offices, etc... you still have to be a part of that union- you have very little sway to try to change anything. Forcing people to join a union is not all that much better than preventing one in the first place IMHO.
        elicash 8y ago
        Unions are democratic institutions. Officers can be voted on. The only way to effect change in the union is to participate. Much like democracy!
EarthIsHome 8y ago
> Our decision to unionize comes at a moment when much of what defines The New Yorker—its atmosphere of deliberation and care and its devotion to factual accuracy, careful prose, and expert design—is vulnerable to competing priorities from our corporate parent, Condé Nast. We are determined to do everything we can to protect the health and the integrity of our publication from staff cuts and reorganizations handed down by corporate management without warning or transparency. It seems like one of their worries is about Condé Nast taking a more direct role over the publication. > We are asking Condé Nast to recognize our union, and we look forward to beginning an amicable collective-bargaining process.
- donohoe 8y ago
  > It seems like one of their worries is about Condé Nast taking a more direct role over the publication Condé Nast has been doing exactly this over the last 5 years as they got better organized. They'd be in worse shape had they not done this. The biggest impact has been in product, engineering, and design. The New Yorker has always been well run for the most part so when Conde managed across the board cuts it was The New Yorker that was often exempted given they never threw money around like others.
- ferongr 8y ago
  >careful prose Heh.
mikeatwork 8y ago
Maybe they can demand the right to write something other than predicable leftist drivel.
prepend 8y ago
I wonder if they considered an employee buyout. It seems like Union v management can be counterproductive, but all workers owning the company seems to put all workers in alignment. It’s kind of weird with New Yorker as there isn’t “labor” per se, as it’s writers and editors and publishers and whatnot.
- donohoe 8y ago
  No. That would spell the end. The magazine relies on economies of scale for sharing costs of print and digital infrastructure across its other Conde Nast titles.
CryptoPunk 8y ago
I imagine this is going to affect their journalistic impartiality.
- epicureanideal 8y ago
  For better, or for worse? It could be argued that whatever bias a union leads to could also have been happening in reverse in a non-union environment. Job insecurity, lack of benefits, etc. such as the article mentions, also could affect impartiality.
  - CryptoPunk 8y ago
    I think for the worse. They will now have a major bone in the individual liberty vs enforced collectivism fight. Their benefits are directly derived from their employer not having the freedom-to-contract/full-control-over-their-private-property.
    - lovich 8y ago
      > freedom-to-contract/full-control-over-their-private-property. Ah yes, I forgot that employees were private property of employees. These damn uppity workers thinking they could band together to negotiate. Why wont they just negotiate one on one with me so I can pay them less?
      - CryptoPunk 8y ago
        That's an absurd straw man. I'm referring to their company, and their right to offer any terms of employment they want, which is restricted by federal law stating that you cannot have employment terms that discriminate against unionized workers, enable the company to refuse particular demands by unions (e.g. collective bargaining), or fire an employee for particular types of activity, like staging a strike. Union-privileging labor laws usurps an employer's control over their own company. They replace contract law with central planning that regiments the acceptable range of employment relationships between consenting adults.
mal10c 8y ago
I've never been part of a union and really don't know much about them. Could be a dumb question, but could someone describe the pros and cons in layman's terms? I usually hear the terms "workers rights", "wadges" and "unions" in the same sentence, so I assume unions are a way to ensure members are all treated the same - in terms of salaries, PTO, etc. If I had an opportunity to join a union, would I accept the wadges that were previously agreed upon by the union/administrative reps? Or, would I have some wiggle room in my salary? For instance, let's say I feel that I'm worth $40/hr, but the union is only paying $30/hr, could I negotiate the higher rate? Sorry for my lack of understanding on this, but I appreciate any helpful comments.
- imbur 8y ago
  It is possible to get paid above the union negotiated rate, called above scale, or to start out at a higher than entry level pay step. It depends on the specific circumstances and collective bargaining agreement.
- nevon 8y ago
  I suspect that this may vary depending on your country of residence, industry and union, but what you're describing is at least not how it works in my country and within the unions I've been part of. My situation is such that the union together with the employer negotiate a base agreement. It might detail things like making sure you received compensation for overtime, what the requirements for termination are, rights in regards to parental leave, minimum annual wage adjustments, etc. My country has very little legislation in regards to workers rights, because we've traditionally had very strong unions instead, so workers rights could be mandated through agreements rather than law. To give you an ideal, the standard collective bargaining agreement within my industry is a few hundred pages. If you are not part of such an agreement, it is instead on you to make sure that your employment contract covers all those aspects. The benefit for the employer is that they have to deal with less legislation, don't have to negotiate a complex contract with every employee (i.e. we already agree on the vast majority of issues, and can focus on the few things where I want individual adjustment), and finally, as long as the employer follows the agreement, the workers through their union agree not to go on strike. Now, to your question, just because you have an agreement through your union does not mean that you cannot exceed that agreement. You can certainly negotiate a higher salary, for example. It only ensures the minimum level.
andrewl-hn 8y ago
> The New Yorker has been a vital force in American journalism for nearly a century. I'm honestly very surprised that there wasn't a union in a company with such a long history. The lack of unions in tech industry always seemed like an anomaly to me, but I attributed it to a fact that most tech companies are too young or too small.
TheMagicHorsey 8y ago
Unions always look like a good idea to workers. But to me a union is a sign of an industry in stasis or decline. There are no dynamic organizations that are adaptable, that are also Union shops. Everywhere and always unions are a force of conservation. They conserve the status as it exists today. Roles, processes, relations, all are frozen in time. Unions work best for workers in places like the public sector where the employer is a government that literally cannot go out of business and where the state grants the union a monopoly so that other companies cannot enter the market and displace the union workers. Teachers, police, postal workers, firemen ... these are roles where no market competition is allowed and consumers are not given a chance to chose alternatives when service gets really bad. That's where a union is most beneficial to workers because they can extract a pound of flesh from the public and the public can't do anything about it. But at a place like the New Yorker, where people can get news anywhere, and there are upstart competitors nipping at your heels, a union will just hasten the decline. Now management will have to go through protracted union negotiations to make changes to the labor force at the company or to adjust roles and responsibilities. I love the New Yorker. I hope enough rich urbanites are willing to pay a subscription to keep the magazine going even if times move on.
- epicureanideal 8y ago
  I think the problems you're ascribing to unions are problems with specific union structures. The definition of a union would permit you to create a structure where these problems don't exist. If we took a snapshot of capitalism in the 19th century, with children working in mines, ridiculously long hours, and so on, we could similarly say "capitalism is terrible because x, y, z", but that was just a particular implementation at that time. I'm not advocating for or against unions, just trying to make sure we're arguing for or against them for valid reasons.
- ritchiea 8y ago
  The New Yorker typically doesn't provide news, with some exceptions such as Ronan Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein. The New Yorker provides the perspective of it's writers which is always going to depend on the editorial strength of the magazine and has always existed in a competitive environment. Admittedly today is an even more competitive environment than the past but my understanding is the publication continues to be profitable despite online competition and it has already outlived many of its internet born competitors.
zackmorris 8y ago
Just for another data point: I live in Idaho, which is a right-to-work state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law Here we tend to call it right-to-work-for-less. The gist of it is that employees aren't compelled to pay union dues if their workplace pays union-negotiated wages. If you think of union protections as something like a private form of OSHA, or say private car insurance, then opting out of paying for them while still receiving benefits is self-evidently not sustainable. Not enough people pay (essentially the same as having too many scabs) so unions can't maintain their bargaining power. The end result is that there are almost no unions in Idaho. My experience with this was when I was moving furniture as a non-technical day job in the early 2000s. It was $10/hr for warehouse work and $12+/hr working for private truck drivers (you could negotiate your own rate). But if you went across the border to Oregon (a non-right-to-work state), it was at least $15/hr. I had several drivers from California pay me $20/hr for the same reason. Our warehouse charged $34/hr. In a business where the work is done primarily by laborers, it's hard to understand how it's fair to pay them less than 1/3 of gross income. That's because it's not. Many businesses here charge $75-100/hr or more and pay their employees the going rate of $15/hr. The end result is that Idaho now has some of the highest wealth inequality in the nation: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article209332734.html http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article209332734... I mention all of this because I get the feeling that non-right-to-work states are enjoying the benefits of unionization without realizing it. It's one thing to argue the nuances of liberty and another to make 1.5 to 2 times as much money (or more) and provide for yourself and your family. Unionization isn't about raising prices. It's about paying better wages so everyone is better off rather than one millionaire at the top. I think of it as "the person doing the lion's share of the work should receive the lion's share of the income". I feel it's important to really stress this on a site like Hacker News whose readership prides itself on being informed and rising above propaganda.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > If you think of union protections as something like a private form of OSHA, or say private car insurance, then opting out of paying for them while still receiving benefits is self-evidently not sustainable. Not enough people pay (essentially the same as having too many scabs) so unions can't maintain their bargaining power. Unions are permitted to refuse representation to non-members, as long as they don't include them in the bargaining unit. If they do, then they are required to represent them. So far, unions have ignored this and pretended that they are forced to represent non-members, because it makes it easier for them to "demonstrate" that they have to have exclusive representation over all members of the bargaining unit. In other words, they intentionally sabotage unions in right-to-work states, because they don't want to admit that they have the legal ability to engage in members-only contracts in right-to-work states, because then they'd have to admit that they have the ability to engage in members-only-contracts in all states. The easy alternative is for unions in right-to-work states to require membership (and fees and dues) for inclusion in the bargaining unit. They would then have no obligation to represent people who don't join the union or don't pay fees and dues.
microdrum 8y ago
Hah http://newyorkerdumbdumbs.com http://newyorkerdumbdumbs.com
- microdrum 8y ago
  "Dear New Yorker Writers, You recently formed a union. Congratulations on that. We hope that you receive all that you desire. But because of the argument in your open letter announcing the union –– an argument that proposes that you should receive more money because you want to have more money –– we are concerned that your intelligence, considerable though it is, is in this case unable to grapple with the actual reality of the world. Your magazine comprises both fact (sort of) and fiction. When you’re asking for money, it’s typically best to focus on the fact world, not the fictional world."
49531 8y ago
There is a lot of anti-union propaganda going on in this thread. I call it propaganda because most of it has no root in reality. Having an organized workforce should be the cost of doing business. If you can only survive as a corporation that does the bare minimum to take care of employees you have no right to be an employer in the free market. Most corporations _can_ function with organized labor, but would rather not because it cuts into profits.
- TomK32 8y ago
  Unions should be in the interest of any corporation that wants healthy, productive workers, the same goes for social insurances that take a lot of angst from the workers. Prussia passed the first relevant laws for compulsory health insurance in 1845, way before the Americans bashed their own heads in over slavery (and other things).
- jblow 8y ago
  As a customer, I hate interacting with unionized industries. Try, for example, having a booth at a trade show. It is completely awful, and most of that is because of unions. > If you can only survive as a corporation that does the bare minimum to take care of employees you have no right to be an employer in the free market. Most corporations _can_ function with organized labor, but would rather not because it cuts into profits. Think about this from a systems perspective. If you are a country that requires businesses to take a certain amount of overhead, then some percentage of businesses will just not be viable. Therefore your entire economy is x% smaller (at least). You can claim that this is offset by the economic well-being of the employees, but that's not at all obvious and would require a lot of justification. (If it were true, you'd expect countries like France to be more healthy economically than the USA, whereas in fact France is quite stagnant). If your economy is x% smaller, it means you are not competing effectively with other countries and have less leverage when dealing with them. And the shrunken economy has real consequences on the standard of living of people living in the country. etc, etc. If you think of this only from a lens of "capitalists are evil people who deserve to be taxed to support the good workers" you are going to be missing most of the picture.
  - 8y ago
mkirklions 8y ago
I didnt think HN needed a downvote button until this thread. Quick Union story- Was an engineer at a factory. Foam pieces were blocking my path to the process room. Like, there was a tiny pathway, probably not shoulder length wide that I'd turn and squeeze in, and that was the path to my room. The floor was a wreck, something bad happened with the temperatures + wax or something. The floor was a mess, foam everywhere. This was my job and I was failing tonight. Messing with temps and wax constantly, checking if chemicals were weird. Pretty much grasping at straws to fix this issue. Well back to the blockage. I couldnt get to my room without either clearing the foam or walking around the factory. So I took the piece of foam and tossed it into the garbage bin behind me. Oh what a mistake. The next morning my boss was swamped with last night's mess and citation/form/write up that I was doing Union Jobs. I was punished by having to take 2 days off unpaid. They paid a worker an entire day's salary, and I got some sort of negative mark on my record. My boss wasnt happy about this despite him being understanding of the silliness. This was one of many many things that got to the point of hating unions. 95% of people just wanted to work. Then you had people that abused the system to the point that it didnt work.
- hpcjoe 8y ago
  Funny how the union abuse anecdote gets downvoted, while the pro-union propaganda doesn't. My stories are similar. Its not a right or left issue. Unions, with very few counterexamples ... to the point where I am unaware of any ... devolve into rent seeking constructs, which increase costs, decrease quality, etc. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I've not yet seen counterexamples, where unions are held up as paragons of what we can be if we work together. Many may have started to provide an offset to the asymmetric power of the management ... but pretty much all of them eventually are corrupted by the power that they yield. So much so that they can negatively impact people whom are not part of their union, wish no part of it, and yet have no choice but to join and pay dues. This is a problem. A union should be a temporary construct, something that can be brought into existence quickly to offset/blunt bad management. Just as quickly, once it succeeds in its mission, it should deconstruct itself. To be formed only when needed. It should not persist. When it persists, it starts with nest feathering by officials at the top, rent-seeking behaviors, etc.
notananthem 8y ago
I've found most people who hate the idea of unions have never had any exposure to them. I've actually never been in a formal union but have used "collective bargaining" and even did union organizing and helped a couple of labor negotiation disputes because the unions benefit me as a non member. I think it's hilarious when people's only exposure to unions is textbooks or being put in charge of managing union employees and they scream bloody murder. Unions are fantastic and being eroded solely through lobbying efforts of billionaire Koch suckers.
- hpcjoe 8y ago
  My union stories. TL;DR definitely not fantastic. Quite the opposite. In grad school, early 90s, we were getting this brand new ethernet installed. Originally they were going to run thin-net, and decided instead to run UTP to the offices. As one of the major users of modems to dial into the university ISP, in order to run our code on supers, I was quite eager to get my connection. They prepped the wiring, and then scheduled us for a month or two out. The reason for this was that they needed one specific union person to cut the hole in the wall for this, and they were busy. Ok, this is just silly. So I asked, "hey, can I help out here? I know how to do this, and can do it in my advisors and my office." We were told that if I did a) they would charge us $3k USD (quite a lot to a poor grad student) PER HOLE, to fill it in. b) they would then charge us another $3k USD to cut a new hole. Because, union. I've got other stories when I was at SGI, and we were setting up systems at Ford ... we couldn't simply carry our computers ourselves ... oh no ... that was verboten. We would get written up, and disallowed back on campus. No, unions are not fantastic. They mostly evolve from being useful constructs to being rent seeking monopolies on labor, opposed to any measure that reduces their ability to seek/collect rent. In grade school, we had a teachers strike[1]. I remember being on a bus, being attacked. By teachers. Who yelled and screamed at us. They threw rocks at the windows. Cracked a few. Police were called, but none of them suffered consequences for their actions. Even though quite a number of us saw them do this, while the only crime we had committed were being small kids on a school bus. My experiences are not aberrations ... I've heard quite similar stories from many others, be they schools, or where ever they've encountered unions. I do have to point out that you are tipping your political beliefs with your last sentence. I've experienced first hand, the violence, and rent seeking behavior of these groups. The lakeland strike was written up in a book a few years ago. Longest and meanest strike in the country by teachers. It made for a fairly shitty 6th and beginning 7th grade for me. It is certainly your right to believe whatever you wish. Me, and many others, whom have suffered from the downsides to unions ... their rent seeking, their monopolization drive on labor ... are opposed in principle, without any goading on behalf of Koch or others. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-strike-lakeland-schools-opening-due-today.html https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-str...
the_seraphim 8y ago
As someone from the UK I find a lot of this hilarious, our employment laws are strict as fuck, unions are optional even in unionised businesses and no one gets fucked over if you don't join
stealthmodeclan 8y ago
I am not very knowledgeable about this subject. So please mercy for my dumb questions. How does union work in Germany or other European countries. How are they still able to keep up their economic competitiveness. Is it because of small population or that they've built a moat around their patents etc... Or they've access to cheap workers from poor neighboring nations or if their unions are all fake scheming together with the owners to raise the productivity for workers and give them false sense of security? I've never seen non German union leader for a German company even tho I've seen lots of non German folks working for them. I never understood why
- gsnedders 8y ago
  I'm sure someone who's actually worked in Germany and has more direct experience than I will come along and correct me, but… * The corporate culture is very different to the US, and there's much less of the antagonism you often see between employers and employees in the US. This manifests itself in various ways, most obviously with employee representatives on the board. There's lot more recognition that both losing staff (especially en mass) is hurtful to the company even in "replaceable" rolls (because there's always job specific knowledge) and that driving the company into the ground isn't good for the employees (because then they don't have a job). * If it's obviously cheaper to move manufacturing overseas (or decrease labour through automation, etc.), the unions are less likely to fight it than they are in the US, but rather negotiate with the company some agreement either moving employees to elsewhere in the organisation or giving them training so they have the skills to be able to find another, safer job. * An extreme example is a union negotiating a pay decrease for its membership in exchange for increased investment in the company to ensure job security (i.e., valuing the long-term outcome of consistent income above short-term income). So, in short, a lot of it simply comes down to a willingness to compromise.
fallingfrog 8y ago
Hell yeah. I'll subscribe just to support them. Also the New Yorker is very high quality journalism.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Nice story, but the issue with 'the press' is not 'fat cat owners', it's 'the bad business model'. I'll bet the New Yorker would pay better + healthcare if they could. But they probably can't. They are probably facing 'going out of business' just like every other publication. So I'm not sure if the union will matter, sadly.

307 points by knuththetruth 8y ago

sli 8y ago

Mononokay 8y ago
Actually, Condé Nast hasn't owned reddit for a long time.
- baud147258 8y ago
  Who is the owner of reddit?
  - DougBTX 8y ago
    https://redditblog.com/2013/08/06/reddit-myth-busters/#independent-reddit-inc https://redditblog.com/2013/08/06/reddit-myth-busters/#indep...
    - baud147258 8y ago
      Thank you.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- icelancer 8y ago
  As of 2017 Advance Publications has been the majority shareholder, which also owns Condé Nast.
- popcat 8y ago
  In effect, Condé Nast does still own Reddit. Advance Publications is the holding company which owns the Conde Nast properties (Conde Nast, Conde Nast International, Conde Nast Entertainment, and Reddit). When Condé Nast originally bought reddit, there was an outcry about how Condé Nast was going to ruin reddit. People thought Condé Nast was just going to pump their magazine content (GQ, Vogue, New Yorker, Wired, many more...) on reddit. In order to prove this wasn't going to happen, Conde Nast reincorporated Reddit as its own company and moved it under its parent holding company (Advance Publications). Advance Publications is to Conde Nast what Alphabet is to Google. Also one thing to note is that Reddit has employees within Conde Nast's head quarters. Its not like they are trying to hide their ownership. They just changed the structure of the ownership to prove Reddit still controls Reddit.

My first instinct reading this was to think about the gothamist/dnainfo kerfuffle. However, Checking the new yorkers revenue shows around 200 million/yr, I definitely did not expect that and likely means it can easily support a union. (unless the new yorker is loaded with debt, which it might be)

philipodonnell 8y ago
Not taking a position either way, but revenue is not the important number here: its excess margin, which in publishing is extremely low.
- heyyyouu 8y ago
  And the New Yorker has a history of being notorious for expenses -- at its height it had writers paid on contract for a full year that write one story (an excellent story, but still), expense accounts through the roof, and an editorial staff that none could rival. Those specific days are gone but its cost structure is still above what many other publications have, so I suspect the margins are still well below average. I love the New Yorker (it went off track for a while, but it's gotten much better in the past 10 years) and what they do takes serious investment and talent, but there's also ways to do it smartly. Although it looks like all of this is preemptive so we'll have to see where it goes.
  - philipodonnell 8y ago
    That may be true, but if the margins were low because the excessive expenses were due to paying people too much (per your example), then a union trying to raise wages might be the last thing they need to survive. :-)
    - hpcjoe 8y ago
      Back in my day, you raised wages when you could demonstrate success in your endeavor to drive more revenue/margin. You got paid less when you drove costs higher. Seems like this is a basic law of economics or something. Monetary rewards for success, monetary losses for failures. Unions have a tendency to be out of sync with this, which means their objectives aren't aligned with managements. Which ... never ... ends well.

yasp 8y ago

Increasing labor costs and reducing employment flexibility at companies that already have notoriously poor business fundamentals? Can't wait to see how that plays out.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
The reduced flexibility worries me far more than the cost. I've worked in union workplaces. There's always some instances of doing nothing (or doing busy work) because the nobody who's allowed to do whatever needs to be done is available and the other people who could do it won't because they're not allowed to do that job. When that happens regularly there's ripples through the workplace culture and work ethic and quality nose dive. I hope the union treads lightly and carefully. If they go full on public transit rail-workers union on day one it's gonna end badly.
- pranjalv123 8y ago
  Why would a editorial staff union be managed the same way as a public transit rail-workers union? Wouldn't a better example be one of the many already existing creative workers unions, like the WGA, CWA, or Newspaper guild?
- stnmtn 8y ago
  Forgive me for being flippant, but yes, if a union of writers acts like a bad example of how unions are supposed to act, the union of writers will be bad But why would you say that? It feels very defeatist to me to do something like that
- lovich 8y ago
  I dont need a union to work at a job where I am not allowed to fix things because "thats not your job" so we sit around for hours because some critical system is down. Everything youve described I have experienced in non union shops, so its not a unique characteristic of unions
ordinaryradical 8y ago
Just curious: what are the New Yorkers "notoriously poor business fundamentals"? Haven't they been one of the most long-running, profitable print magazines in America?

projectileboy 8y ago

I’m always wary of unintended consequences, but I hope this works out for the staff, while not sinking the magazine. The New Yorker has been consistently producing some of the best long form journalism, as well as some of the best public policy thinkpieces.

twooclock 8y ago
I couldn't agree more. Some of their stories are masterpieces of journalism and they cover broad spectrum as well (style, tech, finance, literature...). I guess they are really unique.

dopamean 8y ago

Good for them. I hope that this works out well for both parties (labor and management). I'm curious about the details. I believe that in New York if a union negotiates your contract you are legally obliged to be a member of that union and incur whatever costs are associated (dues). My mother is a labor relations specialist for NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) and she is very concerned about a coming SCOTUS ruling that would remove that legal obligation. How does The New Yorker's new union plan to deal with that if/when it comes?

dibstern 8y ago
Forced membership of a union!? Seriously!? How awful. I’d rather quit than have it forced on me. If I was at the New Yorker I’d almost certainly join, but only if I could do so willingly. Ugh.
- hbosch 8y ago
  “Forced membership” is a way to maintain the union’s power.
  - glibgil 8y ago
    Membership is the power. If no one is a member, there is no power
    - kevstev 8y ago
      Yeah, but when the union head starts paying themselves 300k and despite good living wages and benefits still maintain a large/expensive organizational structure and offices, etc... you still have to be a part of that union- you have very little sway to try to change anything. Forcing people to join a union is not all that much better than preventing one in the first place IMHO.
      - elicash 8y ago
        Unions are democratic institutions. Officers can be voted on. The only way to effect change in the union is to participate. Much like democracy!

EarthIsHome 8y ago

> Our decision to unionize comes at a moment when much of what defines The New Yorker—its atmosphere of deliberation and care and its devotion to factual accuracy, careful prose, and expert design—is vulnerable to competing priorities from our corporate parent, Condé Nast. We are determined to do everything we can to protect the health and the integrity of our publication from staff cuts and reorganizations handed down by corporate management without warning or transparency. It seems like one of their worries is about Condé Nast taking a more direct role over the publication. > We are asking Condé Nast to recognize our union, and we look forward to beginning an amicable collective-bargaining process.

donohoe 8y ago
> It seems like one of their worries is about Condé Nast taking a more direct role over the publication Condé Nast has been doing exactly this over the last 5 years as they got better organized. They'd be in worse shape had they not done this. The biggest impact has been in product, engineering, and design. The New Yorker has always been well run for the most part so when Conde managed across the board cuts it was The New Yorker that was often exempted given they never threw money around like others.
ferongr 8y ago
>careful prose Heh.

mikeatwork 8y ago

Maybe they can demand the right to write something other than predicable leftist drivel.

prepend 8y ago

I wonder if they considered an employee buyout. It seems like Union v management can be counterproductive, but all workers owning the company seems to put all workers in alignment. It’s kind of weird with New Yorker as there isn’t “labor” per se, as it’s writers and editors and publishers and whatnot.

donohoe 8y ago
No. That would spell the end. The magazine relies on economies of scale for sharing costs of print and digital infrastructure across its other Conde Nast titles.

CryptoPunk 8y ago

I imagine this is going to affect their journalistic impartiality.

epicureanideal 8y ago
For better, or for worse? It could be argued that whatever bias a union leads to could also have been happening in reverse in a non-union environment. Job insecurity, lack of benefits, etc. such as the article mentions, also could affect impartiality.
- CryptoPunk 8y ago
  I think for the worse. They will now have a major bone in the individual liberty vs enforced collectivism fight. Their benefits are directly derived from their employer not having the freedom-to-contract/full-control-over-their-private-property.
  - lovich 8y ago
    > freedom-to-contract/full-control-over-their-private-property. Ah yes, I forgot that employees were private property of employees. These damn uppity workers thinking they could band together to negotiate. Why wont they just negotiate one on one with me so I can pay them less?
    - CryptoPunk 8y ago
      That's an absurd straw man. I'm referring to their company, and their right to offer any terms of employment they want, which is restricted by federal law stating that you cannot have employment terms that discriminate against unionized workers, enable the company to refuse particular demands by unions (e.g. collective bargaining), or fire an employee for particular types of activity, like staging a strike. Union-privileging labor laws usurps an employer's control over their own company. They replace contract law with central planning that regiments the acceptable range of employment relationships between consenting adults.

mal10c 8y ago

I've never been part of a union and really don't know much about them. Could be a dumb question, but could someone describe the pros and cons in layman's terms? I usually hear the terms "workers rights", "wadges" and "unions" in the same sentence, so I assume unions are a way to ensure members are all treated the same - in terms of salaries, PTO, etc. If I had an opportunity to join a union, would I accept the wadges that were previously agreed upon by the union/administrative reps? Or, would I have some wiggle room in my salary? For instance, let's say I feel that I'm worth $40/hr, but the union is only paying $30/hr, could I negotiate the higher rate? Sorry for my lack of understanding on this, but I appreciate any helpful comments.

imbur 8y ago
It is possible to get paid above the union negotiated rate, called above scale, or to start out at a higher than entry level pay step. It depends on the specific circumstances and collective bargaining agreement.
nevon 8y ago
I suspect that this may vary depending on your country of residence, industry and union, but what you're describing is at least not how it works in my country and within the unions I've been part of. My situation is such that the union together with the employer negotiate a base agreement. It might detail things like making sure you received compensation for overtime, what the requirements for termination are, rights in regards to parental leave, minimum annual wage adjustments, etc. My country has very little legislation in regards to workers rights, because we've traditionally had very strong unions instead, so workers rights could be mandated through agreements rather than law. To give you an ideal, the standard collective bargaining agreement within my industry is a few hundred pages. If you are not part of such an agreement, it is instead on you to make sure that your employment contract covers all those aspects. The benefit for the employer is that they have to deal with less legislation, don't have to negotiate a complex contract with every employee (i.e. we already agree on the vast majority of issues, and can focus on the few things where I want individual adjustment), and finally, as long as the employer follows the agreement, the workers through their union agree not to go on strike. Now, to your question, just because you have an agreement through your union does not mean that you cannot exceed that agreement. You can certainly negotiate a higher salary, for example. It only ensures the minimum level.

andrewl-hn 8y ago

> The New Yorker has been a vital force in American journalism for nearly a century. I'm honestly very surprised that there wasn't a union in a company with such a long history. The lack of unions in tech industry always seemed like an anomaly to me, but I attributed it to a fact that most tech companies are too young or too small.

TheMagicHorsey 8y ago

Unions always look like a good idea to workers. But to me a union is a sign of an industry in stasis or decline. There are no dynamic organizations that are adaptable, that are also Union shops. Everywhere and always unions are a force of conservation. They conserve the status as it exists today. Roles, processes, relations, all are frozen in time. Unions work best for workers in places like the public sector where the employer is a government that literally cannot go out of business and where the state grants the union a monopoly so that other companies cannot enter the market and displace the union workers. Teachers, police, postal workers, firemen ... these are roles where no market competition is allowed and consumers are not given a chance to chose alternatives when service gets really bad. That's where a union is most beneficial to workers because they can extract a pound of flesh from the public and the public can't do anything about it. But at a place like the New Yorker, where people can get news anywhere, and there are upstart competitors nipping at your heels, a union will just hasten the decline. Now management will have to go through protracted union negotiations to make changes to the labor force at the company or to adjust roles and responsibilities. I love the New Yorker. I hope enough rich urbanites are willing to pay a subscription to keep the magazine going even if times move on.

epicureanideal 8y ago
I think the problems you're ascribing to unions are problems with specific union structures. The definition of a union would permit you to create a structure where these problems don't exist. If we took a snapshot of capitalism in the 19th century, with children working in mines, ridiculously long hours, and so on, we could similarly say "capitalism is terrible because x, y, z", but that was just a particular implementation at that time. I'm not advocating for or against unions, just trying to make sure we're arguing for or against them for valid reasons.
ritchiea 8y ago
The New Yorker typically doesn't provide news, with some exceptions such as Ronan Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein. The New Yorker provides the perspective of it's writers which is always going to depend on the editorial strength of the magazine and has always existed in a competitive environment. Admittedly today is an even more competitive environment than the past but my understanding is the publication continues to be profitable despite online competition and it has already outlived many of its internet born competitors.

zackmorris 8y ago

Just for another data point: I live in Idaho, which is a right-to-work state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law Here we tend to call it right-to-work-for-less. The gist of it is that employees aren't compelled to pay union dues if their workplace pays union-negotiated wages. If you think of union protections as something like a private form of OSHA, or say private car insurance, then opting out of paying for them while still receiving benefits is self-evidently not sustainable. Not enough people pay (essentially the same as having too many scabs) so unions can't maintain their bargaining power. The end result is that there are almost no unions in Idaho. My experience with this was when I was moving furniture as a non-technical day job in the early 2000s. It was $10/hr for warehouse work and $12+/hr working for private truck drivers (you could negotiate your own rate). But if you went across the border to Oregon (a non-right-to-work state), it was at least $15/hr. I had several drivers from California pay me $20/hr for the same reason. Our warehouse charged $34/hr. In a business where the work is done primarily by laborers, it's hard to understand how it's fair to pay them less than 1/3 of gross income. That's because it's not. Many businesses here charge $75-100/hr or more and pay their employees the going rate of $15/hr. The end result is that Idaho now has some of the highest wealth inequality in the nation: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article209332734.html http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article209332734... I mention all of this because I get the feeling that non-right-to-work states are enjoying the benefits of unionization without realizing it. It's one thing to argue the nuances of liberty and another to make 1.5 to 2 times as much money (or more) and provide for yourself and your family. Unionization isn't about raising prices. It's about paying better wages so everyone is better off rather than one millionaire at the top. I think of it as "the person doing the lion's share of the work should receive the lion's share of the income". I feel it's important to really stress this on a site like Hacker News whose readership prides itself on being informed and rising above propaganda.

chimeracoder 8y ago
> If you think of union protections as something like a private form of OSHA, or say private car insurance, then opting out of paying for them while still receiving benefits is self-evidently not sustainable. Not enough people pay (essentially the same as having too many scabs) so unions can't maintain their bargaining power. Unions are permitted to refuse representation to non-members, as long as they don't include them in the bargaining unit. If they do, then they are required to represent them. So far, unions have ignored this and pretended that they are forced to represent non-members, because it makes it easier for them to "demonstrate" that they have to have exclusive representation over all members of the bargaining unit. In other words, they intentionally sabotage unions in right-to-work states, because they don't want to admit that they have the legal ability to engage in members-only contracts in right-to-work states, because then they'd have to admit that they have the ability to engage in members-only-contracts in all states. The easy alternative is for unions in right-to-work states to require membership (and fees and dues) for inclusion in the bargaining unit. They would then have no obligation to represent people who don't join the union or don't pay fees and dues.

microdrum 8y ago

Hah http://newyorkerdumbdumbs.com http://newyorkerdumbdumbs.com

microdrum 8y ago
"Dear New Yorker Writers, You recently formed a union. Congratulations on that. We hope that you receive all that you desire. But because of the argument in your open letter announcing the union –– an argument that proposes that you should receive more money because you want to have more money –– we are concerned that your intelligence, considerable though it is, is in this case unable to grapple with the actual reality of the world. Your magazine comprises both fact (sort of) and fiction. When you’re asking for money, it’s typically best to focus on the fact world, not the fictional world."

49531 8y ago

There is a lot of anti-union propaganda going on in this thread. I call it propaganda because most of it has no root in reality. Having an organized workforce should be the cost of doing business. If you can only survive as a corporation that does the bare minimum to take care of employees you have no right to be an employer in the free market. Most corporations _can_ function with organized labor, but would rather not because it cuts into profits.

TomK32 8y ago
Unions should be in the interest of any corporation that wants healthy, productive workers, the same goes for social insurances that take a lot of angst from the workers. Prussia passed the first relevant laws for compulsory health insurance in 1845, way before the Americans bashed their own heads in over slavery (and other things).
jblow 8y ago
As a customer, I hate interacting with unionized industries. Try, for example, having a booth at a trade show. It is completely awful, and most of that is because of unions. > If you can only survive as a corporation that does the bare minimum to take care of employees you have no right to be an employer in the free market. Most corporations _can_ function with organized labor, but would rather not because it cuts into profits. Think about this from a systems perspective. If you are a country that requires businesses to take a certain amount of overhead, then some percentage of businesses will just not be viable. Therefore your entire economy is x% smaller (at least). You can claim that this is offset by the economic well-being of the employees, but that's not at all obvious and would require a lot of justification. (If it were true, you'd expect countries like France to be more healthy economically than the USA, whereas in fact France is quite stagnant). If your economy is x% smaller, it means you are not competing effectively with other countries and have less leverage when dealing with them. And the shrunken economy has real consequences on the standard of living of people living in the country. etc, etc. If you think of this only from a lens of "capitalists are evil people who deserve to be taxed to support the good workers" you are going to be missing most of the picture.
- 8y ago

mkirklions 8y ago

I didnt think HN needed a downvote button until this thread. Quick Union story- Was an engineer at a factory. Foam pieces were blocking my path to the process room. Like, there was a tiny pathway, probably not shoulder length wide that I'd turn and squeeze in, and that was the path to my room. The floor was a wreck, something bad happened with the temperatures + wax or something. The floor was a mess, foam everywhere. This was my job and I was failing tonight. Messing with temps and wax constantly, checking if chemicals were weird. Pretty much grasping at straws to fix this issue. Well back to the blockage. I couldnt get to my room without either clearing the foam or walking around the factory. So I took the piece of foam and tossed it into the garbage bin behind me. Oh what a mistake. The next morning my boss was swamped with last night's mess and citation/form/write up that I was doing Union Jobs. I was punished by having to take 2 days off unpaid. They paid a worker an entire day's salary, and I got some sort of negative mark on my record. My boss wasnt happy about this despite him being understanding of the silliness. This was one of many many things that got to the point of hating unions. 95% of people just wanted to work. Then you had people that abused the system to the point that it didnt work.

hpcjoe 8y ago
Funny how the union abuse anecdote gets downvoted, while the pro-union propaganda doesn't. My stories are similar. Its not a right or left issue. Unions, with very few counterexamples ... to the point where I am unaware of any ... devolve into rent seeking constructs, which increase costs, decrease quality, etc. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I've not yet seen counterexamples, where unions are held up as paragons of what we can be if we work together. Many may have started to provide an offset to the asymmetric power of the management ... but pretty much all of them eventually are corrupted by the power that they yield. So much so that they can negatively impact people whom are not part of their union, wish no part of it, and yet have no choice but to join and pay dues. This is a problem. A union should be a temporary construct, something that can be brought into existence quickly to offset/blunt bad management. Just as quickly, once it succeeds in its mission, it should deconstruct itself. To be formed only when needed. It should not persist. When it persists, it starts with nest feathering by officials at the top, rent-seeking behaviors, etc.

notananthem 8y ago

I've found most people who hate the idea of unions have never had any exposure to them. I've actually never been in a formal union but have used "collective bargaining" and even did union organizing and helped a couple of labor negotiation disputes because the unions benefit me as a non member. I think it's hilarious when people's only exposure to unions is textbooks or being put in charge of managing union employees and they scream bloody murder. Unions are fantastic and being eroded solely through lobbying efforts of billionaire Koch suckers.

hpcjoe 8y ago
My union stories. TL;DR definitely not fantastic. Quite the opposite. In grad school, early 90s, we were getting this brand new ethernet installed. Originally they were going to run thin-net, and decided instead to run UTP to the offices. As one of the major users of modems to dial into the university ISP, in order to run our code on supers, I was quite eager to get my connection. They prepped the wiring, and then scheduled us for a month or two out. The reason for this was that they needed one specific union person to cut the hole in the wall for this, and they were busy. Ok, this is just silly. So I asked, "hey, can I help out here? I know how to do this, and can do it in my advisors and my office." We were told that if I did a) they would charge us $3k USD (quite a lot to a poor grad student) PER HOLE, to fill it in. b) they would then charge us another $3k USD to cut a new hole. Because, union. I've got other stories when I was at SGI, and we were setting up systems at Ford ... we couldn't simply carry our computers ourselves ... oh no ... that was verboten. We would get written up, and disallowed back on campus. No, unions are not fantastic. They mostly evolve from being useful constructs to being rent seeking monopolies on labor, opposed to any measure that reduces their ability to seek/collect rent. In grade school, we had a teachers strike[1]. I remember being on a bus, being attacked. By teachers. Who yelled and screamed at us. They threw rocks at the windows. Cracked a few. Police were called, but none of them suffered consequences for their actions. Even though quite a number of us saw them do this, while the only crime we had committed were being small kids on a school bus. My experiences are not aberrations ... I've heard quite similar stories from many others, be they schools, or where ever they've encountered unions. I do have to point out that you are tipping your political beliefs with your last sentence. I've experienced first hand, the violence, and rent seeking behavior of these groups. The lakeland strike was written up in a book a few years ago. Longest and meanest strike in the country by teachers. It made for a fairly shitty 6th and beginning 7th grade for me. It is certainly your right to believe whatever you wish. Me, and many others, whom have suffered from the downsides to unions ... their rent seeking, their monopolization drive on labor ... are opposed in principle, without any goading on behalf of Koch or others. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-strike-lakeland-schools-opening-due-today.html https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-str...

the_seraphim 8y ago

As someone from the UK I find a lot of this hilarious, our employment laws are strict as fuck, unions are optional even in unionised businesses and no one gets fucked over if you don't join

stealthmodeclan 8y ago

I am not very knowledgeable about this subject. So please mercy for my dumb questions. How does union work in Germany or other European countries. How are they still able to keep up their economic competitiveness. Is it because of small population or that they've built a moat around their patents etc... Or they've access to cheap workers from poor neighboring nations or if their unions are all fake scheming together with the owners to raise the productivity for workers and give them false sense of security? I've never seen non German union leader for a German company even tho I've seen lots of non German folks working for them. I never understood why

gsnedders 8y ago
I'm sure someone who's actually worked in Germany and has more direct experience than I will come along and correct me, but… * The corporate culture is very different to the US, and there's much less of the antagonism you often see between employers and employees in the US. This manifests itself in various ways, most obviously with employee representatives on the board. There's lot more recognition that both losing staff (especially en mass) is hurtful to the company even in "replaceable" rolls (because there's always job specific knowledge) and that driving the company into the ground isn't good for the employees (because then they don't have a job). * If it's obviously cheaper to move manufacturing overseas (or decrease labour through automation, etc.), the unions are less likely to fight it than they are in the US, but rather negotiate with the company some agreement either moving employees to elsewhere in the organisation or giving them training so they have the skills to be able to find another, safer job. * An extreme example is a union negotiating a pay decrease for its membership in exchange for increased investment in the company to ensure job security (i.e., valuing the long-term outcome of consistent income above short-term income). So, in short, a lot of it simply comes down to a willingness to compromise.

fallingfrog 8y ago

Hell yeah. I'll subscribe just to support them. Also the New Yorker is very high quality journalism.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

Nice story, but the issue with 'the press' is not 'fat cat owners', it's 'the bad business model'. I'll bet the New Yorker would pay better + healthcare if they could. But they probably can't. They are probably facing 'going out of business' just like every other publication. So I'm not sure if the union will matter, sadly.