Wednesday, March 10, 2021

HuffPost Union Explodes With Outrage


BuzzFeed has announced layoffs for the HuffPost newsroom, three weeks after acquiring HuffPost from Verizon Media in February.

Hillary Frey, the site’s executive editor, and Louise Roug, the executive editor for international, will be departing in a restructuring effort aimed at stemming financial losses. 

The HuffPost Union, organized as part of the Writers Guild of America, East, slammed the restructuring effort in a statement:

Today, we learned that 33 of our colleagues — nearly 30% of our unit — will be laid off. We are devastated and infuriated, particularly after an exhausting year of covering a pandemic and working from home. This is also happening less than a month after HuffPost was acquired by BuzzFeed. We never got a fair shot to prove our worth. These layoffs reiterate the importance of forming a union and advocating for our colleagues. We are glad that we are protected by a collective bargaining agreement and that our colleagues will receive severance. Our union will continue fighting to make HuffPost a more just and equitable workplace, including pushing for clear and accountable commitments to hiring and promoting more people of color and for transparency around pay equity.

Actually, the formation of unions which result in above market wages and other collective bargaining "benefits" can be a major driver of layoffs as I explained in a recent podcast:

 

 You can listen to this edition via podcast here or on your favorite podcast platform.

 -RW

3 comments:

  1. "We never got a fair shot to prove our worth."

    It must suck to go through life this clueless to make such an idiotic statement. Its pretty clear that what ever they thought the worth of their work was, the market thought otherwise. This person should get a government job where compensation is largely based on things other than the value of ones work product.

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  2. I think it's poetic justice when union greed results in them getting laid off. They make themselves too expensive and undesirable to employ.

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  3. It just shows that what is considered journalism really isnt prepared by journalists and as such has no new value.

    MSM will see its own culling like retail did. You are now superfluous.

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