Posts tagged editors
Commentary: To Harvard and Back with Julie Su
August 18, 2025 // This year, Julie Su, Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of labor, became a resident fellow with Harvard’s Kennedy School, Institute of Politics. The Century Foundation also brought Su on board as a full-time senior fellow. These prestigious institutions seem to have overlooked key events in Su’s long career. Harvard, where Su, a Stanford grad, earned her law degree, hails the Biden nominee as “a nationally recognized workers’ rights and civil rights expert.” As California’s labor commissioner, Su was “widely credited with a renaissance in enforcement and creative approaches to combating wage theft and protecting immigrant workers.” In reality, her experience was a bit more extensive.
CBS News Digital Staffers Say Fight for Contract Improvements Continue a Year After WGA Unionization
June 20, 2025 // The unionized journalist, editors and social media producers call on management to meet “in good faith” ahead of their current last scheduled bargaining date of June 24
Op-ed: California Legislature should drop latest attack on gig workers
April 21, 2025 // “The bill’s utter lack of detail is a problem,” William Messenger told us; he’s vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which defends workers’ right not to be controlled by unions. “It’s almost like they’re giving that department the authority to just sort of make up its own labor law.” He contrasted that with Massachusetts, whose voters last November passed Question 3, which enacts gig driver rules, but runs to 33 pages and, among other things, details a hearing and appeals process.
UAW Local 2110 Requests Abrams Unionization Vote
April 10, 2025 // UAW Local 2110, which bills itself as a union for “technical, office, and professional workers,” also represents employees at HarperCollins (the sole Big Five publisher to have a union), the New Press, and the Asian American Writers Workshop, as well as workers at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and Columbia University.
‘SNL’ VFX Workers Unionize With IATSE
October 31, 2024 // The “SNL” VFX team isn’t the only one on the hallowed NBC show that IATSE has recently unionized. In October 2022, IATSE successfully organized the show’s editors, who reached a deal on their first labor contract after threatening to go on the first show-specific strike in “SNL” history in March 2023. Like the editors’ process, NBCUniversal management agreed to recognize the VFX workers’ union after the group presented their signed authorization cards, which reflected the unanimous decision to unionize.
70% of Unionized Daily Beast Staffers Take Buyouts as Layoffs Loom
June 19, 2024 // The Daily Beast Union has 37 members. In addition to the buyouts, the union has negotiated a tentative two-year collective bargaining agreement with management that will benefit all members regardless of whether they are taking a buyout. In the agreement, the union secured retroactive pay increases from January 1 for all members. In April, former ABC executive Ben Sherwood and former Hearst executive Joanna Coles were granted a minority stake in the news site, with Sherwood serving as CEO and Coles serving as chief content and creative officer. Since its creation in 2013, The Daily Beast has lost owner Barry Diller tens of millions of dollars.
Remote Work Is Reshaping the California Labor Market
June 5, 2024 // That flexibility may be desirable for workers and it could improve labor force participation. For instance, initial evidence suggests that the opportunity for telework may have improved employment among women in recent years. Additionally, remote work is a valuable option for workers with disabilities, though the recent shift toward remote work does not appear to be widespread among this group. In fact, occupations with more flexibility to work remotely have had strong employment growth. While overall employment fell 2% between 2018–19 and 2021–22, employment in occupations where at least half of workers report working from home grew 12%. The largest growth includes software developers, mathematical science occupations, management analysts, and computer hardware engineers. However, the occupations most likely to do remote work are writers and editors (3 of the top 10 remote occupations), even though this field is not growing very fast in California.
Op-ed: Watch out — California’s damaging gig workers law is going nationwide
February 20, 2024 // The rule is slated to take effect on March 10. U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) have both declared they will use the Congressional Review Act to have this rule rescinded. Previous legislation has been tendered in support of small businesses and the self-employed. The “Fight for Freelancers” group of female writers and editors has filed a lawsuit challenging this rule, which serves to appease Big Labor in the same manner as AB5.
Commentary: Why we just sued the US Department of Labor
February 6, 2024 // As one of us testified before Congress last year, the Biden administration remains relentless. It’s now attempting a regulatory workaround with the Department of Labor’s independent contractor rule, which, in a cruel twist, was released just days before Mercatus Center research showed that the protesting independent contractors have been right all along. Mercatus found that the California approach not only failed to create unionizable jobs, but actually decreased overall employment by 4.4 percent and self-employment by 10 percent. Mercatus also noted that this happened despite California ultimately exempting more than 100 professions. The new Labor rule exempts none. The department acknowledges there may be “conceptual overlap” with the California law’s most harmful language. We agree. What’s worse is that the Labor rule is so vague, it’s impossible for anyone to know how to operate legally with independent contractors. The Biden administration sees this as a feature, not a bug.
Opinion: Biden adds to his ‘Bidenomics’ flop: This new rule throws wrench in popular gig economy.
January 22, 2024 // Biden promised to be the “most pro-union president you’ve ever seen,” so he needs to reward all those campaign donations. And Biden’s doing it regardless of the impact on the economy. Independent contractors cannot be unionized, so the more companies lean on these workers, the less ability unions have to organize. It’s really that simple. The Biden administration is trying to sell its new rule as a way to protect workers and make it easier for them to qualify for benefits such as overtime pay and paid time off.