Score another round for the emerging organized labor movement percolating throughout digital news organizations in the U.S. and abroad.
A large cohort of employees at The Huffington Post have made headway in their attempts to unionize the newsroom, as certified by a letter that circulated at the digital news company Wednesday. The letter, a nine-paragraph missive that bears the names of more than 80 HuffPost staffers who’ve signed union cards, cites job security, unity and creating uniform employment standards as justification for joining the movement:
We wouldn’t back this effort if we didn’t believe it could make HuffPost both a better place to work and a stronger news operation — all without jeopardizing our relationships with managers who happen to be dear friends. In addition to securing employment standards, unionizing creates an organizational infrastructure to facilitate communication and collaboration across positions, departments and regions. This can take many different forms; it’s up to us to decide what to propose at the table and what to organize around. This is a rare opportunity for over 350 editorial staffmembers to come together to advocate not just for ourselves, but for the future of our profession.
News of the letter was reported first by The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple.
Huffington Post employees announced their intention to organize with the Writers Guild of America, East in October, joining a constellation of digital media outlets including Gawker, Al Jazeera America, Vice Media and Guardian US. HuffPost founder Arianna Huffington has publicly expressed willingness to support a union in the spirit of cultivating “an environment of mutual respect among all our staff.”
For HuffPost to successfully unionize, the union drive would need support from a majority of the company’s 300-plus employees, according to Wemple.
