CBS News’ Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has been bullish on “reimagining” the network’s streaming service, “CBS News 24/7.” But many of those staffers are set to walk out the door — for a day, at least.
The streaming service’s 60-person unionized staff are expected to launch a 24-hour walkout on Tuesday, a week after the unit delivered a strike pledge to management. Contract negotiations broke down last week after the two sides couldn’t agree on topics such as raises, defined schedules and severance, letting the three-year contract expire without a deal. Negotiations began in February.
“We agree that streaming news is definitely the future,” Jordan Lilly, a CBS News 24/7 producer and member of its bargaining committee, told TheWrap. “We’ve been doing it here for 12 years. Glad that the rest of the world is catching up. But if that’s going to be where they stake their claim as the future of the company, they need to invest accordingly.”
The walkout is planned to last from 6 a.m. ET on Tuesday to 6 a.m. ET on Wednesday, spanning CBS News 24/7’s New York staffers at the CBS Broadcast Center in Midtown Manhattan and colleagues at the KPIX-TV CBS News Bay Area office in San Francisco. Staffers will also picket both offices.
The battle puts Weiss, an opinion journalist who had no TV news experience before she became CBS News’ editor-in-chief last October, in the position of negotiating with a union under her purview for the first time. The union dispute comes as the network has already been rocked by star departures and scrutiny over its coverage.
The Free Press, the anti-woke outlet Weiss cofounded and still leads, is not unionized, while CBS News has four main bargaining units, including the Writers Guild of America-backed CBS News 24/7, which launched in 2014 and rebroadcasts CBS News shows like “60 Minutes” and “CBS Mornings” along with original shows like “The Takeout with Major Garrett.”
A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment.
The conflict also underscores how CBS News’ unionized staff remains a sticking point as Paramount, its parent company, plans to bring CNN under the same roof through its bid to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery. Weiss has previously expressed her desire to see the deal go through, as she believes it would provide CBS News with even more resources and opportunities by joining forces with a global newsgathering organization like CNN. But CNN is not unionized, complicating efforts to merge the two news organizations as the union’s contract demands the unit continue under a new owner.
Jon Klein, a former CNN president and CBS News executive vice president who runs Hang Media, told TheWrap that CBS News’ unionization has been a sticking point in past efforts to bring the two networks together. While he acknowledged that the effort to bring them under one roof could be “a very exciting opportunity” to expand both networks’ impact, he said negotiations highlight the need for trust and “honest communication” between managers and staffers.
“Now you add the prospect of this major merger to the table, and of course, unions’ antenna are going to go up, because that does represent a threat,” he said. “Mergers generally lead to job losses, so the temperature tends to go up, and even for the best managers, one of the major tasks of any manager in that environment is to try to bring the temperature down.”
Lilly and Tiffany Hudson, another CBS News 24/7 producer and bargaining committee member, said the morale inside the unit has cratered throughout the network’s various changes.
While they said CBS News 24/7 staffers had long done overtime work without additional pay, they claimed managers in recent months have demanded some employees work weekend shifts that run up to 12 hours, despite no weekend-specific live programming. Those on-call shifts have come with a sentiment of “get on board or get out,” Lilly said.
“We generally get treated like we are lucky to be here, even though we are the ones that make everything show up on your screen,” Lilly said.
The company also proposed annual raises that Lilly said were smaller than those provided in the last two contracts. The previous three-year contract provided 3% annual raises for each year, though union representatives declined to say what management’s current offer was.
Part of the frustration comes from a disconnect between members and the network’s management. While Weiss touted her plans to make CBS News 24/7 “a lab for new formats and shows” during a January town hall, Hudson said Weiss’ interactions with CBS News 24/7 staffers have been limited to a few coffee meetings with some in the unit.
“Our members have been hearing things essentially through trade publications, in the rumor mill, about changes to our workplace,” she said. “With this contract, we want to make sure that the protections that we’re fighting for are in it, so no matter what happens, we at least have comfort in knowing that we have strong protections around severance, strong protections on overtime, things like that.”
A person familiar with the matter said Weiss has been meeting with employees across the news outlet, including those at CBS News 24/7.
Improving severance is one of the most pressing topics for the union’s bargaining committee as CBS News reportedly plans to lay off 15% of staff as part of Weiss’ network restructuring. That is aside from potentially more cuts should the Paramount-WBD deal go through later this year, as Paramount has outlined $6 billion in cost cuts through things like “technology integration” and “corporate-wide efficiencies.” CBS News also laid off roughly 100 people in October after Paramount merged with Skydance.
While Lilly and Hudson both said managers have remained tight-lipped on what the future cuts could look like, witnessing other news organizations shedding staff only added urgency to the matter. The unit is currently fighting to maintain its last contract’s minimum of eight weeks’ of severance along with two weeks for every year worked.
“With the prospect of layoffs, with or without that merger sort of perpetually on the horizon,” Lilly said, “the best way to insulate our colleagues from damage is to just make sure that they have an equitable exit package should they lose their job.”
