Condé Nast filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against the NewsGuild of New York after the company fired four employees of around 20 employees who confronted its human resources department over the layoffs and restructuring of Teen Vogue.
The company accused the NewsGuild of New York, which oversees the employee union Condé United, in its complaint of the union’s “repeated and egregious disregard of our collective bargaining agreement.”
The complaint came after about 20 employees — including Jasper Lo, a senior fact checker at The New Yorker; Jake Lahut, a senior politics reporter for WIRED; Alma Avalle, a digital staffer at Bon Appétit; and Ben Dewey, a video staffer with Condé Nast Entertainment — confronted Condé Nast’s head of human resources, Stan Duncan, over the company’s decision to fold Teen Vogue into its sister magazine Vogue. The move resulted in the layoffs of Teen Vogue’s editor in chief and five other staffers.
Semafor first reported the news.
“Extreme misconduct is unacceptable in any professional setting. This includes aggressive, disruptive, and threatening behavior of any kind,” the company said in a statement. “We have a responsibility to provide a workplace where every employee feels respected and able to do their job without harassment or intimidation. We also cannot ignore behavior that crosses the line into targeted harassment and disruption of business operations.”
The NewsGuild said the firings were a “flagrant” violation of the contract’s just cause protections, which require formal disciplinary proceedings rather than at-will firings, and violated the members’ rights to participate in collective action.
“Through these illegal terminations, Condé Nast management is attempting to intimidate and silence our members’ advocacy for the courageous cultural and political journalism of Teen Vogue, as well as diverting attention away from the obvious lack of corporate leadership at the company,” it said.
Susan DeCarava, the president of the NewsGuild of New York, said the company’s “union-busting, using intimidation and grossly illegal tactics to try to suppress protected union activity, will not stand.”
“The NewsGuild of New York has zero tolerance for bad bosses who harass, target and disrespect our fellow Guild members,” she said in a statement. “We represent nearly 6,000 media workers across the tri-state area and we stand firmly in solidarity, ready to fight for the rights of our members illegally fired from their jobs at Conde.”
More to come…