https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html

THE MEDIA EQUATION

Why The New Yorker’s Stars Didn’t Join Its Union

The 96-year-old magazine, known for its revered writers and sophisticated audience, is being consumed by a labor dispute.

By Ben Smith Published June 13, 2021

Writers for The New Yorker have been known to refer to the editor, David Remnick, as “Dad,” so there was something a little illicit about their decision to gather without him back in 2018 at a Windsor Terrace apartment.

Some 20 of the writers, many of them marquee names, were getting together to decide how to react to the surprise announcement that their less heralded colleagues — fact checkers, copy editors, web producers, social media editors — were forming a union and demanding raises.

The writers discussed whether they should follow their colleagues into the NewsGuild, and whether the magazine treated writers fairly.

George Packer broke with the magazine’s tight-lipped traditions by sharing details of his own deal with Condé Nast. He told his colleagues that after years of reporting from Iraq, he had requested and received health insurance before the birth of his first child. Other writers were shocked, according to several people who were there. Under The New Yorker’s structure, even some of the best-known writers are considered “contractors,” and their bosses had given them the impression that health insurance was not a possibility.

An organizer for the NewsGuild who was present, Nastaran Mohit, told the writers she had avoided involving them in the original organizing drive because she knew how close many of them were to management, and she was worried they’d snitch.

But she also said the NewsGuild believed the writers were misclassified as contractors, when they were really akin to full-time employees, and she laid out a path for them to join the union. She told them, two people in the room said, that the guild could protect them from being fired and could even defend them against misguided editorial choices, if, for example, an editor — she cited Arianna Huffington — suddenly wanted everyone to write about sleep.

What happened next was not exactly a scene out of “Norma Rae.” Emily Nussbaum, a television critic, said she would expect to be fired if she wasn’t doing a good job, according to two people there. Nobody was interested in a union rep coming between them and Mr. Remnick on editorial decisions.

Then Ben Taub, an investigative reporter, asked Ms. Mohit why she had told their unionizing colleagues that the NewsGuild was also organizing the writers. When she denied it, he theatrically produced a printed-out screenshot of a WhatsApp message that Ms. Mohit had sent to some 80 of the unionizing employees. In the message, a copy of which I obtained, Ms. Mohit said the union was “in communication” with the writers but could not “be open and public with the fact that we are organizing the staff writers.”

The writers in the room had been invited merely to a meeting to understand what the existing union drive meant for them, Mr. Taub said, and had no sense that they were secretly being organized. He said it was misleading.

“Bluntly, re: NewsGuild, what it comes down to for me is that I would never hire an agent who had lied to or about me,” Mr. Taub wrote to a WhatsApp group for staff writers after the incident. (The NewsGuild’s president, Susan DeCarava, said in response to questions about the exchange that it “does not comment on confidential organizing conversations.”)

The meeting’s host, Adam Davidson, had already been among the writers talking to Mr. Remnick about setting up a health care plan for writers. He summarized what he saw as the “consensus view” in another WhatsApp message to colleagues. (The contents of the writers’ group messages were shared with me on the condition I only quote people by name with their permission. Some of the material in this article is also drawn from reporting on this topic by my colleagues Noam Scheiber and Marc Tracy.)

“None of us want to do anything that could jeopardize the magazine we love. We don’t want so strong a union that mediocrity reigns and it’s impossible to get rid of poor performers. We actually kind of like the feeling that we need to continue to earn our place,” wrote Mr. Davidson, who is no longer a staff writer but still contributes to The New Yorker. “BUT, most of us would like to be able to get health insurance.”

The unionization effort has created an uncomfortable moment for the writers at The New Yorker, who have the kind of jobs and influence every journalist wants but few attain. It has set off reflections on their status and revealed the rare bond and unusual deference many of them feel toward Mr. Remnick....

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html