We do not take the decision to go on an open-ended ULP strike lightly,
"But we do take everything else lightly because we write for The Onion."
(Seriously though, good luck to them and the more strikes we have this year, the better.)
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Wait, is this reality or is this just another layer of the Onion? I don't know what's real anymore.
New business srategy: gaslight the Internet into believing your union is just a joke
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
If an article about The Onion drops on the web, does anyone think its real?
Their union should just be called "The Union" but with the second word pronounced as "onion".
As in Un-ionised water?
Heh. Clever. Unyun.
The Onion Union
If you're not pronouncing both of those words the same, you're doing it wrong.
Solidarity forever
“Our demands are reasonable and well within the budget of G/O Media and its private equity owners Great Hill Partners, who made an estimated $44 million in revenue in 2023.”
How many employees do they have? And what is their current pay?
I think I'm just surprised that they are referencing a $44M revenue in their statement, because that doesn't seem like a lot.
Just doing some napkin math. $44M is like:
- 88 employees at a cost of $500k/employee,
- 220 employees at a cost of $200k/employee,
- 440 employees at a cost of $100k/employee.
And cost is a lot more than just the salary of the employees. It's also things like insurance and 401(k) match. Not to mention things like real estate and IT infrastructure.
If it's just like 200 employees, then they can probably afford to pay the writers six-figure salaries.
But at like 500 employees, the financial situation is pretty dicey. That's $88k in salary per employee with nothing left over for anything else. And that isn't a great salary in NYC.
Google says the count is somewhere between 200 and 500...
I don't doubt that the writers are not being paid enough for NYC and SF. What I'm more surprised about is the fact that G/O Media only made $44M last year.
It is a lot more complicated than that - since G/O media was bought out in 2019, it goes downhill. The new owner pretty much goes with the strategy of prioritizing advertisers and shareholders over workers.
So, they maximize revenue streams upwards to GHP, which is hard, but an easy way to do it is to minimize fixed costs like salaried workers and their benefits. If the revenue goes up or is stable but workers get laid off and salaries get squashed, and part-time or contract workers get hired to do the same job for even less, workers are not going to like this, especially workers who are organized in a union.
Looking at one revenue number as the sole indicator of "healthiness" is exactly the mistake that ends up with worker protests and dwindling quality.
In other words, the money for fair pay for all would be around, but the owners would rather have an even bigger piece of the pie.
History and context behind the situation:
G/O Media's leadership, introduced after the purchase from Univision, has been subject to frequent criticism by employees.[9] Complaints include closer advertiser relationships, a lack of diversity, and suppression of reporting about the company itself.[9] In October 2019 Deadspin's editor-in-chief, Barry Petchesky, was fired for refusing to adhere to a directive that the site "stick to sports."[15] Soon after, the entirety of Deadspin's staff resigned in protest, leaving the site inactive.[16] In January 2020 the GMG Union, which represents the staff of six G/O Media sites, announced a vote of no confidence in CEO Jim Spanfeller, citing, among other issues, a lack of willingness to negotiate for "functional editorial independence protections."[17]
On February 4, 2021, the Writers Guild of America East filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that G/O Media told employees it had fired Alex Cranz for labor activism.[18]
In mid-October 2021, G/O Media removed all images from stories published before 2019 from the 11 websites it owns, including Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, The Onion, and Jezebel.[19]
In November 2021, Gawker reported on substantial staff resignations at Jezebel over the course of 2021, comprising around 75% of staff. The resignations were reportedly related to a "hostile work environment" created by G/O's management and the new deputy editorial director Lea Goldman.[20] In January 2022, another article detailed similar staff decline at The Root, with 15 out of 16 full-time staff having left throughout 2021 since Vanessa De Luca started as editor-in-chief.[21]
In January 2022, seven senior staff members at The A.V. Club left the site after management required them to move from Chicago to Los Angeles. According to the Chicago Tribune, the departing staffers cited a lack of salary increase to account for increased cost of living due to the transfer.[22]
On March 1, 2022, GMG Union members went on strike after failing to reach an agreement on a new contract.[23] The strike was resolved on March 6 with a new contract that included some of the members' terms.[24]
On June 29, 2023, G/O Media implemented a "modest test" of artificial intelligence-generated content on its websites, in a move similar to BuzzFeed and CNET. The move sparked backlash from GMG Union members, citing AI's track record of false statements and plagiarism from its training data.[25] The first AI generated articles on G/O Media sites appeared on July 5 and included a "chronological list" of Star Wars movies and television shows on Gizmodo's io9 section that wasn't in chronological order, omitted Andor and The Book of Boba Fett and stated that the events of the television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars came after those of The Rise of Skywalker; a list of the "best summer blockbusters of 2003" on The A.V. Club; and a list of "the most valuable professional sports franchises" on Deadspin.[26][27]
I know this might sound weird, but does a "paper" like the onion really need to be based in new york?
Why can't all their workers be remote? $88k/year is still a fuckton of money in most parts of the world. If they choose to locate in expensive areas, then they have to pay the price for that decision.
That was way back in the early 2000s; they’ve been gone from New York since 2012 and aren now in Chicago. Looking at the history in Wikipedi, it looks as though there was a first-look media tie up with Miramax that didn’t go anywhere.
why can’t all workers be remote?
I’m in development, and post-Covid we still have our remote workers and an empty office building (or four around Europe) that we are bound by lease contracts. Just because someone wants to work at home doesn’t mean the established office costs to the company doesn’t exist. We’re trying to get out of several of those contracts now, but it’s taking years.
!nottheonion