Kinja reply list

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Kevin DraperGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 12:26pm
I am an avid proponent of unions, a leftist, and am perpetually distrustful of those in power—especially those that hold sway over my own employment. Yet on June 3^rd, I am going to vote against Gawker Media editorial staffers unionizing. That is how fucked this entire process, from start to apparent finish, has been.

Gawker Media is full of incredibly smart people and is at its best when we challenge each other intellectually, which we do every single day as a part of our editorial process. But when it comes to unionizing, apparently we don’t do that. Instead of listening to our colleagues with slight reservations or fully blown concerns—which I had none of at the beginning—we shouted them down, patronized them, and made them feel like their thoughts weren’t worthwhile. Here is a line from the email that went out asking people to contribute comments to this post:

We want to have a range of opinions from across the different sites, and we definitely want to open the comments up to people who disagree, especially because lord knows there’s nothing they hate more than feeling left out.

If you think that sounds condescending and dismissive towards those that have legitimate misgivings about joining a union, well, you’re right!

I believe that all Gawker Media staffers should unionize. I believe that a union provides a strong safety net against the whims of management. I believe that our workplace has problems that are best addressed by a union. But I am so disillusioned by the process we have undertaken so far that I have little faith in our ability to band together and negotiate a contract that improves our collective standing. At this point I don’t believe it is in my best interests, or anybody else’s, to vote to unionize.

This effort began just six weeks ago—I, a Gawker Media employee, found out about it the same way you did—and voting this soon is insane. The only prudent thing to do is slow down, make sure the opinions of all of our coworkers are heard, and figure out conference call technology so that our remote staffers can actually participate. If we could do that, I would proudly vote to unionize. But since we won’t, I have to vote no.
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  Chris ThompsonKevin Draper
  5/28/15 1:28pm
  Brave. Kick ass, Draper.
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  acgilsonKevin Draper
  5/28/15 1:31pm
  So you’re saying there are signs of bias?
  
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Leslie HornGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 12:10pm
Nothing about the road to organization has been organized in the least, so I’m not confident in the WGA’s abilities to help us unionize. I have constantly felt like I’m being sold something by a group that wants to be associated with Gawker Media, the fist digital media company to unionize. That’s a big deal! And a lot of nice, positive PR. Our editorial staff has been rushed to vote next week on whether or not to unionize, when members of the editorial staff are just now being brought up to speed on what is going on. I don’t understand the rush, and the explanation for it has mostly involved half-hearted, contradictory non-answers. Remote staffers have been made to feel like an afterthought—with our means of communication, from word of mouth to sporadic emails to a chaotic Slack channel, proving ill-suited to getting the word out—and it seems like we’re just following the needs of a few people leading the charge. It’s all a bit disingenuous! The process of even keeping all 115 of us in the loop has been a mess, and it has been difficult for people who are against unionizing to properly express how they feel. How can we be sure everyone will be fairly represented if we can’t even get a basic email out to the whole staff?

Honestly, I didn’t even want to write this thing saying why I might vote no, because I feel like it’s either going to be overlooked or not taken seriously or probably both. That’s not a good environment for debate! So I don’t have a lot of faith in the process—that we’d be able to reach a contract that works for everyone. And that’s why I’m leaning toward voting no.
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  Rich JuzwiakLeslie Horn
  5/28/15 1:24pm
  Completely agree, Leslie. This process has brought the worst out of some people and I’ve never seen morale look like this in my 3+ years here. From my perspective, this union has been a time-costing headache that will eventually cost more money than I can afford.
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  Chris ThompsonLeslie Horn
  5/28/15 1:28pm
  This takes guts. Rock on.
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John CookGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 4:33pm
I am voting for a union. Here’s why:

1. This company has for years forced its editorial employees to meet mercurial traffic-based goals that have encouraged mass-produced viral “hits” over the substantive reporting and commentary that we all aspire to create. Gawker Media needs to end traffic-based bonuses and reward its employees for quality reporting and writing that doesn’t keep them on a pageview treadmill.

2. Gawker’s bonus system also serves to keep salaries artificially low. Staffers shouldn’t have to rely on bonuses to make their rent, or hope that they hit their numbers in order to pay their phone bill. Gawker needs to give all non-management editorial employees an across-the-board increase in salary—preferably 5 percent or more—immediately.

3. Gawker is an opaque institution, where decision-making processes are shrouded in secrecy. We need to negotiate to make sure that site leads communicate essential information to their staffs in an open, programmatic way.

4. Gawker’s pay scale is arbitrary, and there are wide and unfair variations in pay across similar editorial roles. Gawker Media site leads should not be permitted to pay their staffs in an ad hoc manner, and should be forced to deploy their staff budgets in such a way that reasonable minimums are applied.

5. Buzzfeed, Vice, and our other competitors need to be unionized, and to the extent that our efforts to alter our workplace environment with the help of the WGA can accelerate the process, we should do it.
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  mtdriftJohn Cook
  5/28/15 5:10pm
  The visual man speaks in text and sways the masses.
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  John CookJohn Cook
  5/28/15 5:48pm
  I get the sense that my razor-sharp wit failed me on this one. To be clear: 1) Already happened in February. 2) Already happened in February. 3) May be true, but is substantially a function of the management strategies (or lack thereof) of the various site leads, who are for reasons that are a mystery to me have been included in the bargaining unit. 4) May be true, but is again substantially a function of decisions that have been made by the site leads, or at least with the active acquiescence of the site leads, who, to repeat, are brothers and sisters in solidarity with the members of the bargaining unit. And I regard 5), which is in my view one of the chief motivators of both Gawker Media management and the WGA in this process, as a self-evidently stupid reason to seek union representation.
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Hamilton NolanGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 1:25pm
I am voting yes on the union.

This has been a truly “grass roots” organizing process in the sense that we’ve been making it all up as we go along. There’s no doubt all the communication efforts have not been perfect. But I really, really hope that everyone will think about the big picture: a vote for this union is a vote for unity. It’s a vote to meld all of our interests together as one. And beyond the practical benefits for us, it s a really important symbolic vote for our entire industry. It’s the first step of a movement that could end up helping a lot of people.

Even though we are all pissed off at each other from time to time we all still, at the end of the day, have similar interests. A union is the only way we get to exercise our will together. It’s the only way we get to participate in our own fate in a real structural way. I am excited to intertwine my fate with all of you motherfuckers for better or worse.
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  MeFailEnglishThatsUnpossibleHamilton Nolan
  5/28/15 1:45pm
  the big picture
  
  unity
  
  together as one
  
  symbolic
  
  entire industry
  
  a movement
  
  our will
  
  our own fate
  
  intertwine my fate
  
  Worded with broad strokes of empty fluff like a true Dear Leader. I love you Hammy, but please return to Earth.
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  Hamilton NolanHamilton Nolan
  5/28/15 1:53pm
  Having read some of the replies here, I’d like to add this also: if you believe in unions, and if you believe collective bargaining is a good thing for workers (us), vote yes on this union. Various people have problems with the process leading up to this union—which was ad hoc and imperfect, for sure. But DO NOT ASSUME that there will be some other chance down the road to have a union that is more perfect. There very well may not be. And voting against the union now because you are upset at the process is going to come with a very high cost if it means we don’t get a union, period.
  
  Every single question that people have about what we want from a union, and how we want our work environment to be, and what issues we want to tackle can all be addressed *only if we vote to form a union now.* We only get the chance to address all these grievances if we can unite enough to make a union in the first place. The vote is next week. Anyone who still has questions or issues or complaints about the process, please contact me, or the union people, or one of your other colleagues here, and we can talk about it.
  
  If you’re philosophically opposed to workers organizing, fine, but don’t vote no out of spite. This union is us and it will be whatever we want to make it, but only if we make it.
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Anna MerlanGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 12:08pm
It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s had to deal with me lately that I’m voting yes. I came to Gawker Media from a newspaper that was falling apart. But we were unionized, and as such, management was forced to deal with us fairly and decently when it came to layoffs, in ways that they otherwise wouldn’t have done.

Working for this company is incredible, and we’re in a very good place right now. But we also exist in a bubble. When it bursts, I’d like us to have fair labor practices in place to protect everyone and provide for them in the event of “downsizing.”

There are also key things that need to be addressed here, and the best way to do that would be a union. Among other things, we need consistent salary minimums for each position, a regular and equitable way of addressing raises, and a system for approving any changes to our health plan, so those changes can’t happen unilaterally. We need a grievance structure in place, in case we’re ever working for people who aren’t as cool as Tommy Craggs and Lacey Donohue. As more of us start families, we need a way to change policies like maternity and parental leave in the event that those policies don’t serve everyone equally well.

A survey of Gawker Media employees found that most of us are very much on the same page regarding what we want out of a union — transparency, equitable pay structures — and what we don’t: any policy that restricts our creativity or hampers the way we communicate with our site leads. I am very, very confident that we can come up with a simple contract that protects the things we all value.

Finally, and I know this is going to set off an avalanche of eye-rolling — I’m rolling my eyes at myself as I write — but I think we have a moral responsibility to help make online media a fairer and more just place for its workers. Most media companies operate on a pretty uneven set of principles — some people are extremely comfortable, while others, like junior staffers, contract employees, and freelancers, have the shit end of the stick, which they put up with hoping it’ll advance their careers.

Media companies like to think of themselves as inherently democratic, but too often, I see women and people of color getting passed over for jobs, raises, and promotions. The union at my old workplace had a “diversity coordinator” position, a writer who was also paid a small extra stipend to help ensure that we weren’t mindlessly hiring an endless series of white guys in their 30s. I’d like to see that happen here, but, like everything else in this process, that idea can be put up to a vote.

Let’s unionize. Let’s set an example that other websites will be shamed into following.
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  Resolute BlueAnna Merlan
  5/28/15 1:33pm
  I’ll support you folks if you PLEASE, PLEASE STOP THIS 500 DAYS OF SOME BLONDE BITCH! I’m getting ready to write a complaint to the office of human rights!
  
  GIF
  
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  Wonder WomaaahnAnna Merlan
  5/28/15 1:36pm
  Not bad reasons, and after being laid off from an online media company (when the Internet bubble burst - I am a dinosaur) I was forced to FIRE - not lay off - all of the LA office because the firm didn’t have money to pay for severance or unemployment.
  
  However - is there any recognition about the change in culture that is sure to accompany unionization? I worked at universities and the tenure system served similar functions (administratively) to a union, but it also meant that faculty were considered “untouchable” and therefore their research, productivity and participation in the mentoring of younger assistant professors was negligible.
  
  Media companies are different beasts, but it would be a shame for editors to lose their hunger - or worse, to have a culture of “group think” where pieces are excluded from coverage due to their inherent contradiction of union views or policies.
  
  Perhaps in establishing a new type of union, Gawker can set a precedent where new writers have a clear roadmap and process for joining the union that ensures contradicting views are protected from penalties of exclusion from the Union? This would separate the editorial process from internal operations a bit, thus lowering risk of people accusing editors and senior staff of intentionally suppressing their promotions or career advancement based on writing. Just thinking ahead 10 years....
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Drew MagaryGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 1:20pm
All right, I’m gonna explain myself here and then never talk about it again. I’m voting no to organizing and I would encourage others to do likewise, for the following reasons:

1. I fucking hate meetings. In fact, site leads at Gawker Media have PROTECTED us from going to endless fucking meetings in the past. God bless them for that. It’s one of the real perks of working here. But now, this process has already resulted in endless meetings (all “voluntary” in the NFL sense), and will only result in more. Before this, you could go your whole career here without being exposed to office politics. That’s over now. Everyone has been pulled into the muck.

2. Things here were fine. Were they perfect? No. Of course not. Our new health care plan BLOWS. Take it from me. My kid really DOES need braces (DENTAL PLAN). But I’ve written for Gawker Media for nine years now, and I’ve never felt like management was intractable. Open communication has always been welcome. When Jezebel had a serious rape gif problem a while back, they made the issue public, and things were addressed IMMEDIATELY. That kind of openness is the reason why people come back to work here over and over again. In a strange twist, this effort has suppressed that openness. There’s been back-channeling and suppressed memos and all that nonsense. Writing this now, I’m honestly skittish about people here being pissed at me for it (for reasons aside from the usual reasons people are pissed off at me).

3. This effort was conceived and set into motion and made PUBLIC without consulting a great portion of the writing staff. I’m not talking about, like, three guys. I’m talking about dozens of people left in the dark at the outset of this. The fact that the effort has already been made public means that the process is irrevocably tainted, because certain people will almost certainly feel compelled to vote YES just so that Gawker doesn’t look fucking stupid. In one union discussion, a person openly talked about how this effort might “forcibly export” unionization to Buzzfeed and Vice. I give ZERO fucks about Buzzfeed or Vice. None. Whether or not they unionize as a result of this effort isn’t a concern and shouldn’t be. That makes the whole thing a PR effort.

Even though efforts were made to help some of us remote folk catch up, the fact that it was started without us, and without much regret in that regard, has poisoned the well in my eyes. I don’t trust the leadership of this effort to do a good job. I don’t find them credible, and I doubt I ever will. I’m fine with the idea of a union (in fact, I was already a WGA member before this started), but not in this form.

4. This has created a GALACTIC amount of acrimony within Gawker. I’ve seen morale erode at an inhuman pace. People I love working with have been rendered unbearably tense. This has long been a place of healthy in-fighting, but this is not healthy. It’s become toxic. I’m not even New York and I can see it. Not the best omen. Voting YES will not magically fix any of this. If anything, it feels like it will only make it worse. It’s been a clumsy effort, and it has shown no signs of growing any more efficient.

5. Tommy will die.

6. Again, I fucking hate meetings.

So I’m voting no. Again, I would encourage others to do likewise so that we can all get on with our lives. This has already wasted so much time and distracted us from our divine mission to put dong pictures on the Internet.

I have to go eat lunch.
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  GreenLEDDrew Magary
  5/28/15 1:35pm
  Obligatory.
  
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  ThePriceisWrongDrew Magary
  5/28/15 1:43pm
  Your point number 3 is really a resounding point that needs to be addressed, and even people who don’t work at Gawker can realize how obviously bad that situation is. Not telling your own employees before you publish some at-length post about it publicly announcing it is ridiculous. If I had to find out from my company that my entire face of employment was changing through a press release, I’d likely start looking for another job because that’s disingenuous at best.
  
  The PR point is spot on. If you’re looking to unionize because you want to set a standard for someone else, or force another company to do something, then you are doing it for the wrong reasons.
  
  It sounds like this whole process hasn’t exactly been an open dialogue for the GM staff. It’s no wonder some of you are definitely apprehensive about even voting at this point.
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Alex PareeneGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 2:20pm
I’ll be voting yes, for pretty obvious reasons.

Having first worked for Gawker Media a decade ago, I can attest to the fact that the company is a better place to work now than it ever was before. Most editorial staffers are paid well, the benefits are good, and upper management is approachable and reasonable. The company has professionalized its operations while preserving the editorial independence and confrontational spirit that set GM apart from its various younger, frequently richer — but more compromised and skittish — competitors. Things are very, very good. (Here I’ll admit to indulging in cantankerous “these kids don’t appreciate how good they have it” talk, on occasion, with some of my fellow old-timers.) In that sense, the company doesn’t “need” a union.

But, of course, things change. If the strange and distorted internet media economy tanks, if we lose a major lawsuit, if (god forbid) Nick sells the company to Michael Wolff, pay could be frozen or cut, benefits slashed, jobs terminated without severance, and so on. For me, the point of any contract negotiated as a result of the upcoming vote would be to preserve what makes this company work for its employees in the event of disaster or sale to supervillain. (Also, yes, some things do need to be improved, like paths to advancement within the company that don’t require negotiating against a competing job offer.)

This is all rather obvious stuff, covered already by Hamilton in his first post on the subject and by numerous others in this thread.

For me the most important point would not simply be to preserve what is good here while working to improve what is less good, but to create a model contract for online media shops full of workers who need protections just as much, and frequently more, than we do.

I hate to see the acrimony that has colored some of the intracompany debates on the union, the election, and the process, but, at the same time, this is a group of people who argue and criticize for a living. Acrimony in this company breaks out over who moves office chairs around over the weekends and whether there will be free light beer, or just free regular beer, during the weekly all-edit meeting. No one, especially not the WGA, is looking to recreate the Newspaper Guild. (Let alone UAW Local 2103, the union my staunchly anti-union reactionary gadfly colleague John Cook worked in, and grew to hate, almost 100 years ago.) Most of the worst case scenarios people have outlined seem pretty easily avoidable. I trust the people who have been organizing the effort to have the best interests of their colleagues in mind, even if they haven’t shown themselves to be perfectly organized or communicative. I trust everyone here to only vote for a contract that is both workable and beneficial to as many employees as possible.

If anything, I think the biggest tactical mistake has been in excluding Tommy Craggs and Lacey Donohue from the bargaining unit, both because the two of them could lend their knowledge and experience to a potential negation, and because without them we have an editorial staff that could be entirely, 100 percent unionized except for... two positions. Once the decision was made to include site leads along with writers (a decision I support), I think it should’ve been made explicit that this was a union for all editorial employees, period. (Such an arrangement is not at all uncommon in the WGA, where television producers and “showrunners” are members along with their staffs.) This is not a terribly popular position, because Tommy is the boss and he sometimes yells at people, but as the saying goes, fight the real enemy (Scott Kidder).
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  John CookAlex Pareene
  5/28/15 2:25pm
  Little-known fact: Matewan was based on the UAW’s effort to unionize Mother Jones. I was the little boy.
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  DennyCraneAlex Pareene
  5/28/15 2:26pm
  Wait wait wait - who is requesting light beer?
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Raphael OrloveGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 12:43pm
Well, I have reservations about many (pretty much all) of the demands people seem to be steering towards, but I do support the union. I think there are a number of people here at the company who would benefit from even a very limited union representation.

The way things work around here (I’ve been at Jalopnik in one form or another for about three and a half years) is that there’s a lot of reliance on personal connections and personal efforts. If you’re getting a raise or a promotion or whatever, it’s because you personally got some leverage and got a deal worked out with your boss. That’s not extraordinary, that’s how the working world works.

But sometimes situations change, and bosses sometimes make promises they don’t keep, and then that puts a very hard burden on you, the employee to sort shit out. Again, this is how the working world works.

But Gawker isn’t a very normal company, and a normal working order doesn’t always work out for us. We do a lot of oddball blogging and reporting. We particularly hire non normal people. That’s who we should be hiring, those are the people we want writing for our sites.

But they’re often exactly the people who don’t exactly flourish when there’s a lot of added pressure to keep their career going along with their actual workload. Sometimes that’s just a time thing, sometimes that’s a socially awkward thing, sometimes it’s a remote thing. The only reason I was hired was because I could come in to the office, and that’s a large reason why I’m still lucky enough to have my job.

Let me be clear that Gawker’s established system works very well as it’s spelled out. But bosses don’t always hold true to what they’re supposed to or what they’ve promised to do. Worse still is when one boss makes one promise, then gets fired for whatever reason, and then the employee sort of gets left without clear footing.

What I’m trying to say is that it would be good to have some kind of safegaurd to protect the company against itself, to hold it to its word, and to take some of the career burden off of our least-equipped (and often most valuable) employees.

I don’t want a pay scale, I don’t want a wage scale, I don’t want hookups with other WGA members, I don’t even think I want severance or any other kind of measures to slow down the actions of this small company. I just want some form of representation to make sure the company does what it says it’s doing.
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  TekamulBurnerRaphael Orlove
  5/28/15 3:57pm
  Everything you just said is well thought out and reasoned, and should resonate with most working stiffs in the US.
  
  But the entire last paragraph differs greatly from the normal operations of a union. Once again, you (or Jalopnik as a whole) is going to be dragged along, the weird cousin of Gawker Media who the family only talks to when mom & dad are looking.
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  Raphael OrloveTekamulBurner
  5/28/15 5:23pm
  yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I worry about that
  
  but again, this union isn’t about me, it’s about people who get screwed by the frantic pace and inconsistent attention that is management in this company
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Stef SchraderGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 1:12pm
Likely vote: no.

While I admire many of my coworkers for bringing up important concerns regarding severance pay and other job-related protections, I feel as if the actual list of common goals across every Gawker Media property is very short, and involving an outside organization to negotiate on our behalf would be a bad return on our investment.

If there’s anything this debate has shown, it’s that we have one of the most brilliant, well-spoken group of employees in the business. I think we would be better served by taking the list of things that we want from our employer and negotiating directly, without having to involve an outside organization.

As many have pointed out, our situation is unique. The WGA-East has primarily worked with more traditional forms of media, and I am not convinced that they will serve us as well as we would ourselves by taking up concerns with our employer on our own. Many of us desire to keep the flexibility that we have in our work situations, particularly those of us who work from off-site as I do. This takes out a lot of the traditional negotiating points for becoming unionized, such as defining a number of vacation days, or setting concrete work hours.

Furthermore, with remote employees, simply staying informed about all things union has been like pulling teeth, with several remotes complaining about emails with questions about the union going unanswered by WGA staff. (Self included.) That, to me, is unacceptable. Any organization we choose to work on our behalf should be as responsive as work on the web demands, and part of that includes communicating well with employees who can’t make it into NYC everyday. I fear that simple logistics would keep remotes from being as involved and informed as we should be as a valued part of the company.

Transparency, after all, is one of the core things we all want.

I’m also uncomfortable with the fact that our most vulnerable employees—contractors—are prohibited from joining the union by the National Labor Relations Board. While “keep our contractors happy” is a provision many of us would gladly argue for in a union contract, the fact that contractors’ concerns would have to go through full time employees, then go through the union, who could then negotiate with the company seems too much like a game of telephone, and I fear that important issues to them could be lost along the way.

The 1.5% salary “raise” that would go towards union dues isn’t chump change, either. While the assumption is that any union dues would be covered by a raise, it’s worth mentioning that the company has to find that 1.5% somewhere. There is the possibility of losing certain benefits to make up the difference.

While I agree that we’re talking about unionizing over extremely important concerns that are more important than catered lunches or gym fees, I don’t agree that we need to pay an outside entity to negotiate these things for us. I know we’re smart, and that if the union goes through, we’ll likely negotiate to protect the benefits that help us the most with getting work done. Still, 1.5% across the board adds up fast.

If we had a longer, better defined list of items that needed to be addressed and rights that needed to be protected, then a union might be worth the cost. If the company’s ownership and management were hostile to the idea of unionizing and there was a clear us vs. them situation going on here, I would feel as if a union would be necessary. That hasn’t been my experience.

I know that other sites have had issues with transparency between management and staff at times, so I don’t intend to downplay or dismiss their experiences. I do know, however, when we’ve collectively said “this is wrong” or “this needs fixed” on our own, management doesn’t typically shut us down or dismiss our concerns. (Look at how okay they are with this union vote, for example.)

As many of the union supporters will argue, though, it’s naive to believe that management will always continue to be awesome about these things forever—and they’re right. So, let’s leverage the current good situation that we have to work with the company directly to ensure that our employment agreements include the vital protections that every worker needs at Gawker Media. I don’t believe we need a union to do that for us.

Much of the reason I enjoy working here is the fact that I feel like a peer to the people I work with—including Jalopnik’s management. I can tell Travis that Miatas are boring and disagree with Matt on headlines or takes and not fear that I’m going to lose my job for not toeing the party line or being a yes-woman. I don’t feel like a peon here, so excluding guys like Hardibro from our collective bargaining unit for being in management simply rubs me the wrong way.
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  RADDUDE308Stef Schrader
  5/28/15 10:51pm
  Contractors would be hosed. With a Union say goodbye to contractors.
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Kyle WagnerGawker Media Staff
5/28/15 1:30pm
I’m voting yes. The basic reasons you’d want a union at Gawker are littered around these comments already, at length, and are obvious enough anyway. That there’s much of a question about voting “yes” to taking a swing at collective bargaining among a group as ideologically aligned with labor as most of the Gawker Media staff, a group also fairly familiar with the non-sequitur of many day-to-day Gawker operations, is a sign we’re fucking something up, but I’ll still take the uncomfortable talks with professional as a corrective over just saying Fuck it and shoving off back to the blog mines.

About those fuck-ups: We have some things to work out, obviously. The volley lines run down something like Oh shut up, this is performative, self-aggrandizing qualming based around wild hypotheticals and whose only purpose is to hear yourselves be the flintiest-eyed skeptics around and Look, butthead, this affects real people’s real income, and right now it’s being run like a barnyard play by people who, like us, do not seem to know much about labor law or what we’re walking into. Two groups of smart people are each convinced the other is full of whining babies. I’m halfway cool with both of these points, and I actually don’t think they’re exclusive of one another; they’re just talking past and over and alley-ooping on top of one another because we’re done a real dick job of getting any kind of How To Do Unioning in front of people.

Example: A lot of angst is going to surface down here about the generally dismissive way dissenters are handled. (It’s not great!) But a lot of that is to do with people not really being clear on how this stuff actually works. Like, there’s an ad hoc organizing committee that’s been acting as liaison to the WGA, and this has, what, hurt feelings and broadly offended some people by being so uniformly pro-unionization. But it’s an Organizing committee! I’m not sure everyone caught the homonym. But then also the Organizing committee has taken on the role of lower case organizing and disseminating information, and there’s no real unified group for people who want to qualm their qualms with some kind of backing—our industry-troll owner and communist executive editor sure aren’t going to put that together. Everyone needs to get their shit together, basically, but I get the confusion since it’s a structural nightmare, and most of us haven’t formed a union before and so don’t know what we’re even supposed to be doing.

That’s just the one thing (but a big thing); there are other things that water my butt, like the WGA not wanting to talk about the mechanisms we’d actually be using and adapting to get the stuff we want (“It works how you want it to work!”), or ignoring basic concepts of negotiation and seeming to imagine assets for stuff like severance will materialize through magic commie dust. But I figure we’ll get to those when we’re talking negotiation, and I (sort of) trust that by then we’ll do a good enough job of communicating all of that for everyone to understand exactly what they’re voting on. We’re fucking up, but in ways that seem correctible, and a Gawker union done well would be good. So, yeah, OK.
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  Greg HowardKyle Wagner
  5/28/15 1:44pm
  As in all things, I stand with Swagner.
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  Jesus DiazKyle Wagner
  5/28/15 2:02pm
  *JESUS DIAZ HAS LEFT THE ROOM*
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So you’re saying there are signs of bias?