BuzzFeed Journalists Vote to Unionize in Wake of Layoffs

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-12/buzzfeed-journalists-said-to-vote-to-unionize-in-wake-of-layoffs

by koolba • 7 years ago

142 98 7 years ago

randyrand• 7 years ago

Single company unions are very interesting.

There’s often very little reason not to join a single company union. Not joining means your coworkers will already dislike you, and typically your pay will be higher anyway. This makes single company unions incredibly easy to form strong monopolies on their employers labor supply.

Contrast this to monopolies in the greater market, a company typically needs to dominate the entire industry to form an effective monopoly.

Effectively unions limit a company’s labor supply to a single supplier - the union - despite there often being hundreds of other near identical suppliers/unions in the greater marketplace. Imagine if you could only buy smartphones from Apple, and other people could only buy smartphones from samsung. That’s effectly what single company unions accomplish. Quite miraculous.

rhcom2• 7 years ago

They didn't join a single company union though as far as I understand. Other members of NewsGuild-CWA: http://www.newsguild.org/mediaguild3/?p=5130

aerotwelve3• 7 years ago

The system you describe as a "single company union" -- which seems to be a closed shop contract with a union that operates a hiring hall -- has been illegal in America since the late 1940s.

Therefore, that is not at all what Buzzfeed's journalists are organizing here.

fromthestart• 7 years ago

I think this is a perfect anti union example. These "journalists" were probably laid off because the market was not interested in their highly politicized outrage "journalism," possibly in addition the recent expiration of the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda act. A union would only have kept these people onboard as dead weight.

jerkstate• 7 years ago

If they unionize that means that the company as a whole would reap what they sow with their editorial direction, instead of being able to just lay off the employees who carried out the marching orders. Their listicle and quizlet department can't save them now. I'm for it.

darawk• 7 years ago

If they unionize that means that the company as a whole would reap what they sow with their editorial direction

...And so you mean the company would fold. What would be good about that?

hlieberman• 7 years ago

Something to be applauded, but I fear that this may be too little too late, especially considering Buzzfeed's heavy dependency on "community content" (read: unpaid work).

ng12• 7 years ago

This is what unions are for. SAG exists (in part) so greedy studios don't cast desperate actors without pay.

Barrin92• 7 years ago

Something to be applauded, but I fear that this may be too little too late

Well you could also see it as history repeating itself. We're only at the start of the new gilded age and now it's service workers and people higher up the value chain that are seeing the consequences of squeezes in the work place.

Maybe this time around it'll be IT workers and journalists who discover that organised labour exists.

dmix• 7 years ago

As far as I can tell the vast majority of unions almost entirely existed in dead industries that all moved to China (and now that China's wages are rising as they develop mature markets to other countries behind the times) or have very close connections to gov work.

skilled• 7 years ago

Do people read BuzzFeed because it's something to talk about during breaks at work? Other than clickbait, does the site provide any kind of meaningful content? Does BuzzFeed operate on a 'vision' or 'goal-driven journalism' ?! I never saw the site for more than a junkyard selling bullcrap to make money.

ahoy• 7 years ago

None of that has anything to do with the topic of unionization.

tricolon• 7 years ago

They do some serious journalism: https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/staff-buzzfeed-news

cf498• 7 years ago

Buzzfeed-news is a separate entity if i am not mistaken?

sandov• 7 years ago

Makes me wonder if they've had difficulties selling their work as credible to the general public, considering what the BuzzFeed name entails.

arcbyte• 7 years ago

Well there goes any respect I had for Pulitzer.

fucking_tragedy2• 7 years ago

Buzzfeed the site and Buzzfeed journalism are separate departments. The latter is very high quality despite the parent brand's reputation.

NormMalvo2• 7 years ago

Buzzfeed journalism is far from very high quality. It shouldn’t even be called journalism. It’s storytelling. They take huge liberties to leave out information that doesn’t fit their intended narrative.

- Someone with first hand knowledge

SlowRobotAhead• 7 years ago

Didn’t they just have their faces rubbed in bad journalism last month when they made some claim about Trump that was so ridiculously untrue that Mueller made a public statement saying it was factually incorrect? [0]

No. I reject the notion that Buzzfeed News is on any level professional. I accept that they work on the stopped-clock principal at best.

[0] reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1PD01J

perryh2• 7 years ago

I love one of their video series called Worth It: https://www.buzzfeed.com/worthit

almost_usual• 7 years ago

Most businesses are “bullcrap to make money”. What does your comment have to do with unionization?

chatmasta• 7 years ago

This comment describes nearly all of the Alexa Top 100 [0]. Turns out people like to waste time, and advertisers like to advertise to people wasting time.

[0] https://www.alexa.com/topsites

tengbretson• 7 years ago

At best they operate as a "news laundering" service. They publish unverified or uncorroborated stories, and that provides the other "more reputable" outlets the ability to talk about the story with the smoke screen of "we're just reporting on the fact that it was reported by someone else."

malvosenior7• 7 years ago

This is the best way to describe what they do.

fucking_tragedy2• 7 years ago

This is great news. Other industries, including software and IT, would stand to benefit from unionization, as well.

CryptoPunk6• 7 years ago

Look at Detroit in the 1950s (highest median income in the US) and look at it today (a ghost town), to see the long term effects of unionization on industry.

The reason the US software industry has been getting stronger and producing ever greater numbers of high paying jobs is that it enjoys the efficiencies of a free market in labor, aka it's not dominated by monopolizing unions.

freeone3000• 7 years ago

The impact of the gas crisis, a preference for foreign imports, and the continued (real or percieved) lower quality of American-made vehicles might act as several intervening factors for the fall of Detroit; moreover, while all unions intervene on behalf of their employees, not all enforce wage ceilings.

The Screen Actors Guild is a counterexample for both points - Hollywood continues to be world-leading, and top actors continued to be paid well, while even the actor you've heard the least of has a minimum wage, down to rules around how many times they can be called-back for an audition.

The free market relies on free association, equal footing, and complete information for both parties. For most people, the business has a significant power advantage. Moreover, management is organizing together in order to depress wages through non-poach agreements - why shouldn't the workers work together as well?

maxxxxx3• 7 years ago

Look at the car towns in Germany and you will see the long term effects of unionization on industry. Companies do well and their employees too.

c0nducktr• 7 years ago

The history of Detroit is much more complex than you're making it out to be.

flashman• 7 years ago

BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti told employees in 2015 that "when you look at companies that have unionized, the relationship [between managers and employees] is much more adversarial."

I suppose the remaining employees have taken the layoffs as a sign that management IS their adversary.

ardy422• 7 years ago

I suppose the remaining employees have taken the layoffs as a sign that management IS their adversary.

Nah, basic economics says that now that the supply of employees at Buzzfeed has been reduced, the remaining employees have more leverage to negotiate with management as rugged individualists. /s

mc32• 7 years ago

I don’t suppose they’ll care to bail the company out with their own finances if the company were to teeter on bankruptcy for the sake of collectivism...

skookumchuck4• 7 years ago

Unions should regard businesses as their customers, not their enemies. The relationship should not be regarded as zero-sum, i.e. that the union can only win if the business loses, and vice versa.

geezerjay2• 7 years ago

It's hard to keep looking at their employer as something other than their adversary when he just fires dozens of your fellow colleagues.

therealforsen• 7 years ago

They should have taken the layoffs as a sign their company produces bad content and to get a real job.

blueline• 7 years ago

These are employees of buzzfeed news, not buzzfeed, which produces pretty high quality content.

CryptoPunk6• 7 years ago

I expect this will affect the political impartiality of Buzzfeed journalists. They will have a direct financial interest in discrediting the idea of a free market in the public eye.

hexane360• 7 years ago

As opposed to non-union media organizations having a direct financial interest in discrediting the idea of unions in the public eye?

Arn_Thor3• 7 years ago

By your very own logic the editorial board/owners of news media have a financial interest in discrediting the idea of collective bargaining and profit sharing in the public eye, instead promoting free-market ideas at all costs.

If you claim they don't, then you can't draw that conclusion for unionized journalists either

CryptoPunk6• 7 years ago

Of course, the owners are not going to support restrictive labor relations laws that are directly aimed at reducing their private property and contracting rights in order to enable their employees to extract above-market wages from them.

But it's pretty hard for owners to prevent this kind of outcome. You are legally restricted from exercising your right to free association and only employing people who oppose unions, if you ever become an owner.

dfischer• 7 years ago

I do not see unionizing as the solution. The entire industry needs to reinvent itself. It's totally understandable to seek security; but the issue is deeper. This wouldn't be the economic solution that can sustain itself – it maybe allows temporary job security.

The platforms that exist today are in danger of capitulating because the common consumer of our zeitgeist no longer has the behavior to pay for what they use. Social media has absolutely destroyed what paying for a product means. The common consumer has become used to not paying online because they are the product.

These businesses are not sustainable no matter what in the current zeitgeist of ad money and social media. Besides the option of all journalists working for Twitter and Facebook which wouldn't be my pick... but that's another topic.

We need something radically different to offset that imbalance.

olefoo• 7 years ago

So like, a Basic Income Guarantee, Single Payer health insurance not tied to employment and maybe some sort of jobs program we could use to solve a couple of pressing problems involving climate change and failing infrastructure?

Sign me UP!

repolfx• 7 years ago

These businesses are not sustainable because their costs exceed their income. It's perfectly possible to make profitable and sustainable news outlets. The Times of London is profitable and has been for years, for example, because it put up a paywall and creates journalism people are willing to pay for. The Daily Telegraph also posts healthy profits.

I'm afraid there's a a very clear correlation here that people seem to be in denial about. There isn't a problem with people paying for news. There's no problem with the internet and there's no need for new business models. News can be profitable and for some firms, it is. What's not profitable is freely distributed left-wing agenda journalism like Buzzfeed: the market is saturated, and the people who make it do it primarily for influence and not to build a business. As a consequence they not only woefully over hire, but they are also loathe to put up paywalls and take other obvious steps more conservative, more business oriented media outlets have been willing to take.

A simple contrast is between the Guardian, which had as of a few years ago over 1000 journalists, no paywall and massive losses, with the Times, which turned a profit. To illustrate the irony here is an opinion piece in the Guardian asking whether this "joltingly unlikely thing" is "worth it":

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/07/is-profit-wort...

Murdoch’s flagships are locked behind a barrier that throttles traffic and, arguably, relevance. But they made £1.7m last year.

Well, is being a sustainable business worth it? Is it better to be able to pay the bills or be "relevant"? These are probably not questions most working people have the luxury of asking, and given the state of the Guardian's finances, soon it won't be a luxury they have either.

hackerpacker• 7 years ago

Well they get upset if you tell them to learn how to code, could even get you banned from twitter.

I prefer independants these days, folks on bitchute and youtube and etc. The "organized press" has been gunning for shutting down independants with crap like six degrees of hitler, like what happened with gab. But ultimately it has next to zero overhead to start your own "channel", and you find people that actually do a pretty decent analysis without being obvious political tools or otherwise completely manipulative all the time.

newsgremlin• 7 years ago

But consumers are happy to pay subscriptions, we've seen this with apple music and spotify, amazon prime, netflix etc. Consumers know what value for money they are getting with these services and the convenience of them, converting freemium users to paid users is a task that each of these services has been successful at.

There was a similar thread on HN talking about this very subject. If a news source is behind a paywalled subscription model - even if they promise unbiased, non-partisan investigative journalism, how many would actually deliver this and not compromise the trust of their readership? How many would even dare to promise this in the zeitgeist of fake news and gear their business model around this? At the moment it's a risk that no credible news source wants to take.

mesozoic• 7 years ago

Seems like the kind of thing Buzzfeed would be all for

deleteme12345• 7 years ago

Lean management may be the answer

BuzzFeed Journalists Vote to Unionize in Wake of Layoffs

Related Stories