Things may have seemed bad a year ago, but we’re entering into an even darker age for the media industry.
Two of the biggest digital news players–HuffPost and BuzzFeed–announced sweeping layoffs last week that impacted hundreds of employees. Now over 400 BuzzFeed writers are petitioning the company for better severance after it refused to pay them out for earned time off. “[F]or a company that has always prided itself on treating its employees well, we unequivocally believe it is the only justifiable choice,” the employees wrote on Medium, imploring the company to include the paid time off.
This development is especially chilling, given BuzzFeed’s checkered past with regard to organized labor. CEO Jonah Peretti, ever the shrewd businessman, knew how to exert maximum control over his employees. While multiple media companies have unionized their newsrooms over the last couple years (disclosure: Fast Company, too), the BuzzFeed CEO successfully quashed any attempt at his own company. At a companywide meeting in 2017, Peretti told his staff that, though he likes unions, he just simply doesn’t think they they are right for BuzzFeed. This pressure continued during a U.K. unionization drive, which was ultimately voted down.
Now, the laid-off employees are given no choice but to accept what BuzzFeed has offered them. Notably, the severance package didn’t include earned time off, and without the leverage of a union, BuzzFeed has no reason to meet these people halfway. It’s an especially ruthless decision, given the company’s years of trying to bill itself as a haven for millennial creatives.
BuzzFeed is not planning on paying out vacation days to laid off workers (outside of CA, where it’s state law). Some people had many days, especially essential staff who worked weekends and holidays in exchange for extra comp days. I signed this. https://t.co/sekPMIxXGQ
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) January 27, 2019
In response to the employee calls, BuzzFeed‘s chief people officer Lenke Taylor sent the following memo to the organizers of the petition:
We would like to have a dialogue with the news staff council and staff from other departments on PTO payout. We are open to re-evaluating this decision but we think it is important for everyone to understand the tradeoffs in changing the PTO practice, how we came to the decision to offer everyone a minimum of 10 weeks salary, and the ways we’ve adjusted our severance to be fair and competitive in every state where we operate.
We will follow up soon with next steps so a representative group of employees from across the company can meet with Jonah and me about this. You’ll hear from us by the end of the day Monday on scheduling and next steps.
(Update: see below.)
Of course, BuzzFeed and HuffPost aren’t the only companies announcing sweeping cuts, nor is Peretti the sole media executive strategically circumventing organized labor efforts. At the end of last year, digital news startup Mic laid off nearly all of its workforce and sold to Bustle founder Bryan Goldberg in a fire sale. In the last month, Mic quietly relaunched with a brand-new staff that seems to be regurgitating old, unfinished work–despite the fact that Mic‘s old staff writers were in the process of unionizing. Other large media companies have seen big cuts in the last year too, including Gannett, Vox Media, and Vice.
