More than 400 staffers at Condé Nast, the parent company of prestigious publications including Vanity Fair, Vogue and GQ, walked off the job Tuesday in a historic 24-hour work stoppage over the company’s plan to lay off staff.
The daylong walkout, intentionally timed on the day of the Academy Awards nominations, is in protest of what the NewsGuild of New York described as “unlawful handling of layoff negotiations and bad-faith bargaining.”
Hundreds of staffers were expected to join a picket line outside the company’s New York City headquarters that “will feature an Oscars-nomination-style treatment with a red carpet, ‘step and repeat’ and more to further highlight why these journalists chose to walkout,” the union said in a statement.
In a video shared to X on Tuesday morning, protesting staffers could be heard chanting, “bosses wear Prada, workers get nada!”
The protest comes after Condé Nast announced on November 1 it was planning to cut 5% of its workforce. The company then revised the plan, announcing it would lay off 94 unionized members, or some 20% of the Condé Nast Union. The union’s bargaining team countered management’s proposal, offering a slimmer number of layoffs, more severance and a moratorium on cuts. The publisher’s last offer, issued earlier in January, kept the total number of cuts at 94 and almost halved the proposed severance, the union said.
“The last nearly three months of fighting for our co-workers on the company’s layoff list has led us to today,” Ben Dewey, vice chair of the CNE unit of Condé Nast Union, said in a statement. “Our 24-hour walkout is about standing firmly behind our colleagues and showing Condé Nast management in the clearest possible way that we will not tolerate their disrespect at the bargaining table over these layoffs. It is time to start bargaining in good faith with us.”
The NewsGuild of New York has filed an unfair labor practice charge on behalf of Condé Nast Union, citing regressive bargaining.
“Media workers at Condé Nast are key to the company’s success and reputation for excellence. They deserve for their work to be respected on the job and at the bargaining table,” Susan DeCarava, president of The NewsGuild of New York, said in a statement. “Guild members in Condé Nast Union walked off the job today to remind management of their worth and urge company reps to bargain in good faith. We demand nothing less.”
A Condé Nast spokesperson dd not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The work stoppage is the latest to impact major news publications, with staffers at the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post walking off the job in recent months in pretest of layoffs and contract frustrations.
