Editorial staff at digital media giant The Huffington Post have officially asked company management to recognize Writers Guild of America, East as their union.
About 220 of HuffPost’s eligible 350 employees signed authorization cards, asking management at the online news aggregator to recognize their union status under WGAE. That union currently represents about 4,000 media workers.
HuffPost management will now either choose to recognize the union, or require employees to vote on representation via an election conducted with the National Labor Relations Board.
Call it a sign of the times. While the notion of digital media employees unionizing seemed inconceivable several years ago, Gawker, Salon, ThinkProgress, Vice Media, Al-Jazeera America and The Guardian US have all done so recently.
If represented by WGAE, Huffington Post would be the largest unionized digital media group.
The announcement of employees' support for representation came with a statement from HuffPost’s organizing committee, which reported that “employees came together to form a union to ensure that we have a voice in the company’s future."
“A union is a practical way to both preserve what’s working and advocate for necessary changes,” the statement continued. “In just a few months, staff across the country united around key issues including: transparent and equitable compensation, clear job responsibilities, editorial freedom and independence, diversity in the newsroom and consistent management protocols on hiring, firing and discipline.”
Rumors of HuffPost employees’ efforts to unionize first became public in October, provoking HuffPost co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington to express her support for the idea, claiming in a statement that "a union is a practical way to both preserve what's working and advocate for necessary changes.”
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