The New Yorker has formed a union

Just for another data point: I live in Idaho, which is a right-to-work state:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Right-to-work_law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Right-to-work_law</a><p>Here we tend to call it right-to-work-for-less. The gist of it is that employees aren&#x27;t compelled to pay union dues if their workplace pays union-negotiated wages. If you think of union protections as something like a private form of OSHA, or say private car insurance, then opting out of paying for them while still receiving benefits is self-evidently not sustainable. Not enough people pay (essentially the same as having too many scabs) so unions can&#x27;t maintain their bargaining power. The end result is that there are almost no unions in Idaho.<p>My experience with this was when I was moving furniture as a non-technical day job in the early 2000s. It was $10&#x2F;hr for warehouse work and $12+&#x2F;hr working for private truck drivers (you could negotiate your own rate). But if you went across the border to Oregon (a non-right-to-work state), it was at least $15&#x2F;hr. I had several drivers from California pay me $20&#x2F;hr for the same reason.<p>Our warehouse charged $34&#x2F;hr. In a business where the work is done primarily by laborers, it&#x27;s hard to understand how it&#x27;s fair to pay them less than 1&#x2F;3 of gross income. That&#x27;s because it&#x27;s not. Many businesses here charge $75-100&#x2F;hr or more and pay their employees the going rate of $15&#x2F;hr. The end result is that Idaho now has some of the highest wealth inequality in the nation:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.idahostatesman.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;business&#x2F;article209332734.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.idahostatesman.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;business&#x2F;article209332734...</a><p>I mention all of this because I get the feeling that non-right-to-work states are enjoying the benefits of unionization without realizing it. It&#x27;s one thing to argue the nuances of liberty and another to make 1.5 to 2 times as much money (or more) and provide for yourself and your family.<p>Unionization isn&#x27;t about raising prices. It&#x27;s about paying better wages so everyone is better off rather than one millionaire at the top. I think of it as &quot;the person doing the lion&#x27;s share of the work should receive the lion&#x27;s share of the income&quot;. I feel it&#x27;s important to really stress this on a site like Hacker News whose readership prides itself on being informed and rising above propaganda.

Unions always look like a good idea to workers. But to me a union is a sign of an industry in stasis or decline. There are no dynamic organizations that are adaptable, that are also Union shops. Everywhere and always unions are a force of conservation. They conserve the status as it exists today. Roles, processes, relations, all are frozen in time.<p>Unions work best for workers in places like the public sector where the employer is a government that literally cannot go out of business and where the state grants the union a monopoly so that other companies cannot enter the market and displace the union workers. Teachers, police, postal workers, firemen ... these are roles where no market competition is allowed and consumers are not given a chance to chose alternatives when service gets really bad. That&#x27;s where a union is most beneficial to workers because they can extract a pound of flesh from the public and the public can&#x27;t do anything about it.<p>But at a place like the New Yorker, where people can get news anywhere, and there are upstart competitors nipping at your heels, a union will just hasten the decline.<p>Now management will have to go through protracted union negotiations to make changes to the labor force at the company or to adjust roles and responsibilities.<p>I love the New Yorker. I hope enough rich urbanites are willing to pay a subscription to keep the magazine going even if times move on.

Good for them. I hope that this works out well for both parties (labor and management).<p>I&#x27;m curious about the details. I believe that in New York if a union negotiates your contract you are legally obliged to be a member of that union and incur whatever costs are associated (dues). My mother is a labor relations specialist for NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) and she is very concerned about a coming SCOTUS ruling that would remove that legal obligation. How does The New Yorker&#x27;s new union plan to deal with that if&#x2F;when it comes?

I&#x27;ve never been part of a union and really don&#x27;t know much about them. Could be a dumb question, but could someone describe the pros and cons in layman&#x27;s terms? I usually hear the terms &quot;workers rights&quot;, &quot;wadges&quot; and &quot;unions&quot; in the same sentence, so I assume unions are a way to ensure members are all treated the same - in terms of salaries, PTO, etc. If I had an opportunity to join a union, would I accept the wadges that were previously agreed upon by the union&#x2F;administrative reps? Or, would I have some wiggle room in my salary? For instance, let&#x27;s say I feel that I&#x27;m worth $40&#x2F;hr, but the union is only paying $30&#x2F;hr, could I negotiate the higher rate? Sorry for my lack of understanding on this, but I appreciate any helpful comments.

I’m always wary of unintended consequences, but I hope this works out for the staff, while not sinking the magazine. The New Yorker has been consistently producing some of the best long form journalism, as well as some of the best public policy thinkpieces.

Increasing labor costs and reducing employment flexibility at companies that already have notoriously poor business fundamentals? Can&#x27;t wait to see how that plays out.

&gt; Our decision to unionize comes at a moment when much of what defines The New Yorker—its atmosphere of deliberation and care and its devotion to factual accuracy, careful prose, and expert design—is vulnerable to competing priorities from our corporate parent, Condé Nast.<p>This is something that reddit users should also probably keep in mind as they use the site, as Condé Nast owns reddit as well.

My first instinct reading this was to think about the gothamist&#x2F;dnainfo kerfuffle.<p>However, Checking the new yorkers revenue shows around 200 million&#x2F;yr, I definitely did not expect that and likely means it can easily support a union. (unless the new yorker is loaded with debt, which it might be)

I wonder if they considered an employee buyout. It seems like Union v management can be counterproductive, but all workers owning the company seems to put all workers in alignment. It’s kind of weird with New Yorker as there isn’t “labor” per se, as it’s writers and editors and publishers and whatnot.

I am not very knowledgeable about this subject. So please mercy for my dumb questions.<p>How does union work in Germany or other European countries. How are they still able to keep up their economic competitiveness. Is it because of small population or that they&#x27;ve built a moat around their patents etc... Or they&#x27;ve access to cheap workers from poor neighboring nations or if their unions are all fake scheming together with the owners to raise the productivity for workers and give them false sense of security? I&#x27;ve never seen non German union leader for a German company even tho I&#x27;ve seen lots of non German folks working for them. I never understood why

I&#x27;ve found most people who hate the idea of unions have never had any exposure to them. I&#x27;ve actually never been in a formal union but have used &quot;collective bargaining&quot; and even did union organizing and helped a couple of labor negotiation disputes because the unions benefit me as a non member.<p>I think it&#x27;s hilarious when people&#x27;s only exposure to unions is textbooks or being put in charge of managing union employees and they scream bloody murder.<p>Unions are fantastic and being eroded solely through lobbying efforts of billionaire Koch suckers.

I didnt think HN needed a downvote button until this thread.<p>Quick Union story- Was an engineer at a factory. Foam pieces were blocking my path to the process room. Like, there was a tiny pathway, probably not shoulder length wide that I&#x27;d turn and squeeze in, and that was the path to my room.<p>The floor was a wreck, something bad happened with the temperatures + wax or something. The floor was a mess, foam everywhere. This was my job and I was failing tonight. Messing with temps and wax constantly, checking if chemicals were weird. Pretty much grasping at straws to fix this issue.<p>Well back to the blockage. I couldnt get to my room without either clearing the foam or walking around the factory.<p>So I took the piece of foam and tossed it into the garbage bin behind me.<p>Oh what a mistake. The next morning my boss was swamped with last night&#x27;s mess and citation&#x2F;form&#x2F;write up that I was doing Union Jobs.<p>I was punished by having to take 2 days off unpaid. They paid a worker an entire day&#x27;s salary, and I got some sort of negative mark on my record. My boss wasnt happy about this despite him being understanding of the silliness.<p>This was one of many many things that got to the point of hating unions. 95% of people just wanted to work. Then you had people that abused the system to the point that it didnt work.

&gt; The New Yorker has been a vital force in American journalism for nearly a century.<p>I&#x27;m honestly very surprised that there wasn&#x27;t a union in a company with such a long history. The lack of unions in tech industry always seemed like an anomaly to me, but I attributed it to a fact that most tech companies are too young or too small.

&gt; Our decision to unionize comes at a moment when much of what defines The New Yorker—its atmosphere of deliberation and care and its devotion to factual accuracy, careful prose, and expert design—is vulnerable to competing priorities from our corporate parent, Condé Nast. We are determined to do everything we can to protect the health and the integrity of our publication from staff cuts and reorganizations handed down by corporate management without warning or transparency.<p>It seems like one of their worries is about Condé Nast taking a more direct role over the publication.<p>&gt; We are asking Condé Nast to recognize our union, and we look forward to beginning an amicable collective-bargaining process.

Nice story, but the issue with &#x27;the press&#x27; is not &#x27;fat cat owners&#x27;, it&#x27;s &#x27;the bad business model&#x27;.<p>I&#x27;ll bet the New Yorker would pay better + healthcare if they could. But they probably can&#x27;t. They are probably facing &#x27;going out of business&#x27; just like every other publication.<p>So I&#x27;m not sure if the union will matter, sadly.

Hah <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;newyorkerdumbdumbs.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;newyorkerdumbdumbs.com</a>

As someone from the UK I find a lot of this hilarious, our employment laws are strict as fuck, unions are optional even in unionised businesses and no one gets fucked over if you don&#x27;t join

There is a lot of anti-union propaganda going on in this thread. I call it propaganda because most of it has no root in reality.<p>Having an organized workforce should be the cost of doing business. If you can only survive as a corporation that does the bare minimum to take care of employees you have no right to be an employer in the free market. Most corporations _can_ function with organized labor, but would rather not because it cuts into profits.

Hell yeah. I&#x27;ll subscribe just to support them. Also the New Yorker is very high quality journalism.

I imagine this is going to affect their journalistic impartiality.