These Are the Online Media Companies That Unionized, Then Laid Off Huge Numbers of Journalists
7th October 2019
Get woke, go broke.
Multiple online publishers have made large reductions in editorial staff over the last few years — and one factor seems to permeate many different newsrooms that have faced this peril — unions for journalists.
Indeed, newsrooms in New York City and Washington, D.C. may be the last place many Americans think of when they think of workers’ unions, but in fact, many unions can be found right there. Over the last half decade or so, media staffers, especially at online news sites, have made an effort to unionize their newsrooms, and in many cases, succeeded.
Yet many of these unions were not able to stave off the looming threat of job losses. Indeed, as news outlets juggle driving traffic, attracting advertisers, and keeping the money flowing, many have had to make reductions in staff to keep their company on track.
Unions grew up in industries where workers were readily replaceable because they were unskilled or semi-skilled and so had no market power vis-a-vis employers. Many of the ‘union drives’ these days are in technology companies where unionization technically ought not to apply, which suggests either than the skills involved aren’t all that special or that employees have actually bought the whole socialist fantasy history that their equally left-wing teachers have been packing into them since kindergarten. To such people, reality bites — and bites hard.