Washington Post Tech Workers Vote To Form A Union
The Washington Post Tech Guild will pursue its first collective bargaining agreement with the company following a vote of 171-38 to establish the union, the NewsGuild has announced.
The Tech Guild has been recognized the National Labor Relations Board.
The Post’s tech workers announced the formation of the union in April. The Guild claims they were subjected to aggressive union-busting tactics by the Post, and that this is the first successful organizing effort at The Post under Jeff Bezos’ ownership.“Today we win a seat at the table for all tech workers at The Washington Post,” says Luke Connors, software engineer at the Post. “Together, our union will secure stronger protections and access to benefits that will help us do our jobs better.advertisementadvertisement“I have mourned too many colleagues being laid off who were doing good work and were needed by the business,” adds Mike Stemle, principal architect at Arc XP, the Washington Posts’s cloud-based digital experience platform. He adds: “Our union gives me hope that we may be able to achieve some job security at long last.” Last September, the Post laid off 54 people at Arc XP.The Tech Guild has the support of the Washington Baltimore News Guild, The NewsGuild-CWA and the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA).
Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom
As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies — they are deploying an array of editorial responses.
The Times and its critics | Washington Post mortem
Related Knowledge Center: State of the business model
The traditional journalism business model has long since collapsed, and news organizations have shrunk or disappeared entirely. While a number of promising experiments are under way, the public has not shown a willingness to buy what news organizations are selling.
Related Knowledge Center: Washington Post mortem
The Washington Post is shedding both staff and subscribers — but making friends in the White House — as its owner, Jeff Bezos, remakes its opinion pages and lops off major areas of coverage.