Reference no: EM133309266

In 2016 Vice Media and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) agreed on a contract covering about 70 people in Vice Media's digital businesses.115 In 2017 another 430 Vice Media employees voted to unionize. Many of them work on video content for Vice.com and Vice-branded HBO programs. Some joined the WGA East, and some the Motion Pictures Editors Guild. With "new media" growing fast, what's happening at Vice Media illustrates the union challenges new media firms face today.

Vice Media began as an edgy magazine in the 1990s. Today, in addition to its print arm, it has morphed into an online news source with channels including Noisey, Garage, and Motherboard, a Viceland cable channel (among others), and mobile platforms. Walt Disney Company made a $400 million investment in Vice, and Vice Media recently got a $450 million investment from a private equity firm. Some of this new money will go to developing scripted programming for Vice's Viceland cable channel and mobile platforms. In any case, it's obvious that, as at other new-media firms like Buzzfeed and Vox, content creators- writers, editors, and so on-are the lifeblood of the company. That makes labor relations a central issue for companies like these.

For unions, the new-media workforce represents one of the best opportunities in years for union membership to start growing again. Unions like the WGA are therefore pursuing these employees. In doing so, they're emphasizing the things millennial workers seem to care about the most, not just wage increases, but editorial independence and diversity.

To help unionize firms like these, unions are holding networking events, and headlining them with employees from new-media firms that they've organized. For example, one union let unionized writers from The Daily Show explain the advantages of union membership.

Some new-media companies (including Vice Media) were fairly welcoming of the unions, while others were more combative. For example, Buzzfeed's CEO reportedly took a strong stance against the "adversarial" nature of unionization.

Therefore, things don't always go well for new-media employees who do organize. For example, the owner of Gothamist and DNAinfo closed both sites after employees voted to unionize. The owner had warned that it was already running both sites at a loss.

Unions and new-media employers, therefore, have to understand what new-media employees-many or most of whom are millennials- want from employers. And it turns out that what they want isn't that different from what workers have always wanted. In addition to editorial independence, they want good pay and benefits, fair treatment, and the ability to be heard.

Employers who hoped that the glamour of writing for a fast-growing new-media firm might be enough to keep workers from unionizing were wrong. For one thing (to paraphrase one Vice Media channel editor), after Mashable laid off 50 employees and Buzzfeed fired 100, anxiety began prompting employees to unionize. Many (or most) of these employees went to good schools and got good jobs, only to find that journalists' average pay is low and turnover is high: Many were on their second or third jobs just a few years after college. It's probably not surprising that one study found that 46% of people 30 and over view unions favorably, while 55% of those 18 to 29 have favorable views.

Furthermore, both the new-media firms and their employees have evolved. For example, many firms, including Vice Media, began as what one writer called the "lawless cowboys" of new media. But as they and their employees aged, the writers and employees wanted more stability.

1. The WGA did not have to call a strike at Vice. Why do you think that is? If they struck, what employer tactics would you have suggested to fight back once the strike began?

2. What do you think accounts for the fact that Vice Media agreed fairly quickly to recognize the union, whereas other new-media firms simply closed down? What does this mean for unions like the WGA?

3. The organizing campaigns at new-media firms like Vice and Buzzfeed are essentially conflicts between professional and creative people (the WGA) and owners and TV and movie producers. Do you think such conflicts are different in any way than are the conflicts between, say, the United Autoworkers or Teamsters unions against auto and trucking companies? Why?