The Hearst Union, which represents 415 people within the powerhouse publishing company, delivered a pledge to management that threatened a strike should the two parties not agree to a new contract ahead of its expiration date on Saturday.
More than 85% of the company’s union signed onto the pledge. The union covers staffers across Hearst’s portfolio of titles, including magazines such as Elle, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health and Town & Country.
Hearst did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment. Negotiations on a new agreement started in December, following multiple rounds of layoffs across Hearst’s publications.
“We, the members of the Hearst Magazines Union, are committed to our mission of securing a collective bargaining agreement that justly addresses our concerns regarding the current state of the economy, the ever-changing landscape of print and digital media, the layoff process, and other issues that we’ve deemed crucial to our continued success in the workplace,” the pledge read.
The union is asking Hearst to raise its salary floors, boost its annual wage increases, cement a hybrid work schedule that includes options to work from home and safeguards around the company’s use of AI within newsrooms.
“We, the undersigned, will not accept a contract that does not adequately address these issues with binding guarantees. Should we not receive such a contract, we are prepared to strike,” the pledge continued.
The Writers Guild of America East, the Hearst Union’s parent guild, claimed in a post on Threads that the company “has proposed lower raises than members received in their last contract, increased in-office expectations, and offered ZERO protections against AI.”
Strikes and walkouts have become more commonplace across the media industry throughout the decade, including strikes at Business Insider and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a walkout at the New York Times, for example.
