#gmg union

[nearmidnightannex]

GMG Union wins! ... I hope.

GMG Union won. (gmgunion.com)

After four days of picketing in the first open-ended strike by a digital media shop, G/O Media management has acknowledged the strength and demands of our members. The members of GMG Union have reached a tentative deal with management, pending a ratification vote by members[...]

[...] What we won:

Higher salary minimums for all positions, including $62,000 at the lowest tier in 2022 (up from $55,000), with an additional $1,000 each year for the life of the contract

Guaranteed 3% annual raises for all unit members

15 weeks parental leave

12 weeks minimum severance

Maintained our current cost-sharing cap for healthcare

WPATH-compliant, trans-inclusive healthcare

Defeated management’s proposal to give up bargaining rights over changes to healthcare mid-contract

45K diversity effort budget with audit and transparency

Goal of 40% of candidates at the hiring manager interview stage from underrepresented backgrounds

Retained right to publicly speak about working conditions, including social media escalation campaigns

Strengthened editorial independence language; management must now adhere to both G/O Media's editorial policy and the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics

Obtained guarantees against forced relocation for current remote staff

I’m glad they were able to get these concessions from management. Seriously, I missed The Root during the past few weeks.

But ... these concessions are so comprehensive, it makes me wonder what’s up. I mean ... these are a LOT, especially for a company as ... emphatic about its positions, let’s say, as G/O Media seems to be. I mean, the last time these issues, or anything like them, came up, the entire staff of Deadspin resigned. 

So why did they cave here? It can’t be that they thought that the union was in the right. I mean, they were, but that’s not the issue. It’s probably not the bad publicity-- honestly, there wasn’t that much of it, but maybe it was bad in all the right places. So what happened to make them concede? (Also, I will note that nowhere in any of the PR materials I’ve seen has “the life of the contract” been stated -- three years? five? What? That might be an interesting point to see.)

I’m glad for the writers that they were able to get a much more fair contract ... but I really can’t help but wonder why.

[brotheralyosha]

As of March 1, GMG Union is officially on strike. We're asking people not to click on—or contribute content to—@Gizmodo, @Jalopnik, @Jezebel, @Kotaku, @Lifehacker, and @TheRoot.

Learn more about our fight for a fair contract with @GOMediaInc:

Our members have been so grateful for all your support thus far. We have created a fund to help blunt the impacts of going without pay while we continue to fight for a fair contract. Please donate and share:

[etakeh]

GMG Union @gmgunion As of March 1, GMG Union is officially on strike. We're asking people not to click on—or contribute content to— @gizmodo​, @Jalopnik, @jezebel, @kotaku, @Lifehacker, and @TheRoot.

Learn more about our fight for a fair contract with @GOMediaInc

[niche-gamer]

Report: Entire Deadspin Staff Quit After Bosses Order Them to "Stick to Sports" https://nichegamer.com/2019/11/04/report-entire-deadspin-staff-quit-after-bosses-order-them-to-stick-to-sports/

[saltybiowarefantears]

Please support the Gizmoid journalists during their strike for better contract terms! Please stay off the listed websites during this time. For more information on the strike itself, click this sentence.

Text from image reads:

Tweet by GMG Union

As of March 1, GMG Union is officially on strike. We’re asking people not to click on - or contribute content to - Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker, and The Root. Learn more about our fight for a fair contract with GOMediaInc: (link to gmgunion.com)

[raeonthearoace]

Because FUCK G/O Media

[windmaedchen-fairytail]

Hello,i like your pictures and headcanons about the Dreyar family. Especially about Ivan. I think it could be a very interesting character in the canon. But.... Eh... So, I have two headcanos and questions. I want to know your opinion.

Firstly, Do you think that Ivan could have created a dark guild just to pass information about the dark world to Makarov? And nobody knew about it. Could they use Gajeel as a postman, because it was not safe to use lachrymes of communication and letters (for example, the union of dark guilds began to spy Ivan's guild)? To be honest, I thought so,until the GMG arch began. And if you answer yes, why did Ivan attack Laxus? Was it specially, or did Ivan succumb to a dark influence and really betray Makarov? Or did something else happen?

Secondly, I imagined how Ivan used his Shikigami Magic like baby monitor for little Laxus. And he grumbled when Laxus try to eat paper men. What do you think about it?

Thank you for your work.

English isn't my mother tongue. Sorry, if there are mistakes.

Hello from Russia.

Hello back to Russia! How are things over there? We have had fairly cold weather for late summer recently. >__<

Oh, you think Ivan could have been a spy for Makarov in the world of dark guilds? Sounds intriguing. I guess it's possible. But one would need to question why Makarov appeared to

not know where Ivan is for quite many years (at least from Laxus being 17 to Laxus being 23)

was so distraught about Ivan knowing of certain information pertaining to the guild of Fairy Tail

In a way, it appears to me that Makarov didn't know what Ivan was really doing, whether that was going to be bad or good. So if Ivan had "good" intentions, Makarov didn't know about them and Ivan didn't think it worth while to let Makarov know through Gajeel.

Somewhere I saw the idea that Ivan might actually want to take Lumen Histoire off Fairy Tail's hands for their own good, maybe because he knew a way to get rid of it, or because he attempted to continue where Precht left of in terms of reviving Mavis. As in, Ivan actually having good intentions, but being painted as the villain because he has, for some reason, a very bad relationship with his father.

Let's say he did initially leave FT on semi-good terms with his dad, or in an arrangement with which to atone for his misdeeds and so Ivan creates Raven Tail to be part of the underworld. Information is being transferred via double agents or directly via secret meetings. And yet, why would Ivan not completely blend in and be part of the Baram Alliance? Why risk to reveal their true face by being such an independent guild?

For the bitter actions during the GMG, I think indeed, something else must have happened for Ivan to show his bad side. That could have been anything! Maybe Master Hades poisoned his mind? Or Ivan and Laxus had a good relationship to begin with but the 7 year disappearance took a toll on Ivan as a father? xD There might be the whole Zeref thing, possibly, where Ivan is a willing or unknowing agent for the dark wizard in his quest to obtain Fairy Heart.

... I don't know... I don't think I have any good ideas for such a possibility, as interesting as it sounds. xD Sorry! But I'd definitely like a well-thought out possibility of Ivan being, in fact, a good guy. Somehow.

[justolena]

Il mio 2016, tutto qui. Le corse alla gmg, i sacrifici, le idee, la collaborazione.. La collisione! Tutto in vista di un'esperienza che nonostante sia passata ormai da mesi, non smette di bruciare in me, nei miei occhi e nei miei pensieri. L'anno che comincia all'insegna del duro lavoro, della produzione continua, della convivenza continua con tutti coloro che hanno sognato con me quei giorni e poi le risate, i successi, i litigi e poi eccoci lì. Mi auguro dal profondo del cuore che ognuno di voi possa fare nella propria vita, almeno una volta, questa esperienza. Capireste che fino a quel momento avete vissuto nella maniera sbagliata, che c'è un posto in cui la gente si incontra, si saluta e si sorride senza essersi mai vista. Dove si può scegliere di dare un portachiavi ad uno sconosciuto, ballare per strada, suonare e cantare a tutte le ore. Dove puoi conoscere gente e parlarci fino a tardi, dove puoi trovare addirittura meravigliosamente piacevole dormire a cielo aperto su un prato con un milione e mezzo di persone. Io ho ritrovato la fiducia nell'uomo. Perché siamo molto di più delle sofferenze che ci sono state inflitte, molto più del male che siamo stati capaci di fare agli altri. Noi siamo uomini. E siamo in grado di essere e di sentirci famiglia in qualsiasi posto nel mondo. Ho imparato che una bandiera può farti sentire a casa, ma c'è qualcosa che unisce ancora di più. Che va oltre la lingua, la bandiera, il colore della pelle, l'orientamento politico.. Qualcosa che ci ha portato fin lì, che 'ci ha radunati da ogni terra'. In nome di quell'Amore che ci unisce e ci accompagna, ci siamo dati le mani, abbiamo ballato e cantato lo stesso canto, ognuno nella propria lingua, riscoprendo un amore che unisce, che ti salva e che non ti abbandona. Il mio augurio per questo nuovo anno è di riuscire a proiettare la gioia di questa esperienza nella vita degli altri, nella speranza che un giorno tutto questo... Diventi la nostra 'normalità'. ❤️

[kontextmaschine]

With GMG Union as like the granddaddy of this new media unionization wave

I'm not sure "all the Deadspinners quit at once" was the best option

Like if the contract was competent there was a "work to rule and make them grieve us out with benefits" option, right?

It might prove something to other private equity buyers of 2000s blogs so people no one will ever be in the position of again

Just the price they bought at and the return G/O offered as-is, you could've got a good Atlanta hotel instead

The real opportunity was being the Condé Nast/Time-Life that things condense around, to be the one that gets to scale up, and whats the point of scaling up with Hamilton Nolan's "I H8 Capital" crew

You realize theyGawker sold at a discount for that, to people who calculated having to break the staff

[smoothshift]

Has Jalopnik gotten considerably worse over the past few months? via /r/cars

Has Jalopnik gotten considerably worse over the past few months?

I know the anti-Jalopnik circle jerk is already strong on this sub, but I've been a regular viewer and commenter there for years. Its had ups and downs, but generally a good place to catch up on news.

But I feel like the quality has dropped off a cliff in the past months. Every post there seems low-effort, they don't seem to get invited to drive cars anymore and the constant gMG uNiON drama is annoying.

The best writers left long ago (Doug, Tavarish, Spin-ellie). All that's left are mostly staff that hate cars and never drive them or people who aren't given the resources to make actual content.

I'm ranting into the void at this point. Just still wish I could read Letters to Doug or follow a crazy build to bring a $600 944 back to life.

[un-enfant-immature]

Cards Against Humanity acquires ClickHole, will make employees the majority owners

Cards Against Humanity, the company behind the card game of the same name, has acquired the satirical site ClickHole from G/O Media.

BuzzFeed News broke the story last night, reporting that ClickHole’s employees will become the majority owners of the site. Cards Against Humanity founder Max Temkin told BuzzFeed that the goal is to give the ClickHole team “a chance to do their own thing,” with the resources to expand beyond the current five-person team.

“We’re giving them funding, and if they ask us, we’ll be an advisor,” Temkin said.

ClickHole launched in 2014 as part of The Onion, with a focus on parodying the kind of viral content that you’d find on sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy (it published the greatest diet guide of all time).

goodbye, good luck and solidarity to our comrades and garbage sons @ClickHole! here’s to more employee-owned media models in 2020 https://t.co/xaHqqygEWH

— GMG Union (@gmgunion) February 4, 2020

The Onion was acquired by Univision, which then acquired a number of Gawker Media properties (but not Gawker itself) and rebranded them as the Gizmodo Media Group. Univision sold both organizations off to private equity firm Great Hill Partners last year, giving them yet another name: G/O Media.

Things haven’t gotten noticeably smoother since then, with G/O Media executives shutting down the political site Splinter, followed by Deadspin editors and writers resigning en masse after a clash over the direction of the site, particularly a directive to stick to sports-related content.

We’ve reached out to both G/O Media and Cards Against Humanity for additional comment. Before the news broke yesterday, ClickHole published a story declaring, “Our Computer Has Become Infested With Crickets And ClickHole Is Temporarily Going On Standby.”

Deadspin writers quit after being ordered to stick to sports

[bigyack-com]

Editor Who Sharpened Daily News Is Picked to Revive Deadspin

The publisher of the irreverent sports website Deadspin tapped a former editor in chief of The Daily News on Thursday to lead rebuilding efforts, nearly three months after a staff exodus over what employees characterized as editorial meddling.Admirers credit Jim Rich, the site’s new editor in chief, with revitalizing The News as a sharp liberal counterpoint to its conservative rival, The New York Post. At The News, Mr. Rich also presided over an investigation into police evictions that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.G/O Media, Deadspin’s owner, said Mr. Rich would work in Chicago, where Deadspin recently moved after 15 years in New York.Deadspin, which promises “Sports News Without Access, Favor or Discretion,” occupies a distinctive place in sports media. It earned acclaim for a 2013 investigation that exposed as a hoax the death of the college football star Manti Te���o’s long-distance girlfriend. (Mr. Te’o was fooled into thinking she was real.) The article epitomized the site’s sardonic yet rigorous coverage of the sports world, which it defined broadly.“One of the things that we will continue to do is take on the issues and the stories that other sites traditionally shy away from, even if they make people a little uncomfortable,” Mr. Rich said in an interview.Jim Spanfeller, G/O Media’s chief executive, praised Mr. Rich in a statement, saying his “extensive experience as a reporter and editor will enable him to rebuild and lead Deadspin into the future.”That ability is also likely to depend on Mr. Spanfeller, who has been running G/O Media since April, when the Boston private equity firm Great Hill Partners bought Deadspin along with several other sites that Gawker Media once owned — including Jezebel, Gizmodo and Lifehacker.Mr. Spanfeller’s firing in October of Deadspin’s interim editor in chief, Barry Petchesky, who had refused to obey an editorial directive to stick to sports, prompted more than a dozen staff members to head for the doors. Deadspin has not published anything since Nov. 4.This month, 97 percent of the G/O Media editorial staff members who are represented by the GMG Union supported a vote of no confidence in Mr. Spanfeller, the union said. In a statement posted to Twitter on Thursday, the union said it objected to the decision to move the editor in chief position away from New York without negotiating.A spokesman for G/O Media declined to make Mr. Spanfeller available for further comment on Thursday.G/O Media was profitable in its previous two quarters, for the first time since the sites were combined in 2015, the company said last month in an emailed news release.Mr. Rich, who was ousted as the Daily News editor in 2018 when its owner halved the newsroom staff, said he sympathized with the former writers and editors.“It’s not a decision you make lightly when you’re weighing your livelihood against your journalistic principles,” said Mr. Rich, who has edited sports at both The News and The Post and was a Huffington Post executive editor.He said that G/O Media had approached him and given him assurances that “led me to believe that I was not going to be constrained as far as my editorial decision-making, and that I was going to be able to go after whatever story I felt we needed to.”His next task is to build a staff, and he said he welcomed all applicants — including those who left the site last fall.Laura Wagner, a former Deadspin writer who covered media — and who posted a long Deadspin article in August about G/O Media’s management — said, “I understand media is a tough industry, and I’m sympathetic to the fact that people may be desperate for jobs.”But she said she doubted that ex-Deadspinners would rejoin the site under current management: “That’s not going to happen.” Read the full article

[directresponsecopywriting]

G/O Media Says GMG Union Is ‘Harassing Candidates’ as It Tries to Rebuild Deadspin http://dlvr.it/RMq9wm http://dlvr.it/RMq9wm

[shirlleycoyle]

Wow, Hearst Set Up a Whole Website Dedicated to Union-Busting

On Monday morning, employees at Hearst Magazines were treated to an email from Troy Young, the president of the company, who had a casual, no-pressure reminder for them. "As I mentioned in my note before the holiday, we want to make sure everyone has the information they need to make a choice about the union," Young wrote. He then linked to a purported source of "information" about unionizing, namely a glossy, misinformation-packed and very aggressive anti-union site Hearst has created for its employees.

Employees at Hearst Magazines across 24 brands announced their intention to unionize with the Writers Guild of America East on November 11. (Full disclosure: WGA East represents some VICE employees, including the author.) The burgeoning union has also asked Hearst to voluntarily recognize them.

That seems deeply unlikely: the backlash from the company was swift, with numerous employees telling New York magazine that Hearst was conducting a "classic union-busting" campaign, in the words of one staffer. That campaign has reportedly included pressure to revoke the union cards employees have already signed (signaling their desire to join a union), as well as pulling each brand at the company in for meetings. (Better described as captive audience meetings, which the burgeoning union had warned staffers they would likely face.)

As described to New York, those meetings have contained classic anti-union misinformation, claiming, for instance, that Hearst would be unable to hand out raises if a union came to be, and making remarks that one staffer interpreted as "an invitation to quit:"

Annie White, a staff editor for Car & Driver, told New York that while her magazine’s meeting with Lewis, Young, and other members of management was not combative, Hearst representatives were “patronizing, a little paternalistic.”

“I think Troy [Young] literally said the words ‘we’re not union busting,’ and then came forward with all these classic union-busting talking points,” White added. The union was a third party, an outside force, they reportedly said, and they warned staff that Hearst may not be able to hand out raises outside a union contract. In White’s words, Young also described Hearst as a company with a “long-standing culture” which “is not for everyone, and if you don’t want to be part of this culture, that’s a decision that you have to make.” White said she did not interpret the remark as a threat, but as “an invitation to quit."

And now comes the microsite, which claims to inform Hearst employees of supposed union-centric facts, all of which are, once again, classic and quite ominous anti-union talking points, including claims that a union contract could take "years to negotiate," and that WGAE "officials" would negotiate "pay, benefits and working conditions" for the brands:

If the WGAE wins an election, it would need to negotiate a contract for its members with Hearst Magazines. All terms of pay, benefits, and working conditions would be up for discussion. No one can guarantee in advance what that contract would include. And decisions about WGAE bargaining priorities would be made by the union’s negotiating committee – which likely would be led by WGAE officials, not Hearst Magazines employees.

Conveniently omitted was that Hearst will be obligated to maintain the status quo during negotations, and that a bargaining committee is always, always made up of both WGAE organizers and employees at the companies they represent. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the bargaining committee at my previous employer, Gizmodo Media Group, during the time GMG employees were negotiating a contract with the company. This means I know, factually, that the claim that negotiating committtees are "led by WGAE officials" is false. )

The site goes through all the hits: Pretending that union membership takes away one's inalienable rights. Claiming that the dues are cripplingly expensive. Implying, without evidence, that employees have been pressured to sign union cards. And, inevitably, claiming that conditions at Hearst are already great, so why would you unionize? The site also links to an entire separate notice explaining how to cancel already-signed union cards, writing, "You may have signed up before you realized all the risks, costs and obligations involved — you may wonder whether it is possible to change your mind. You have asked about how you could get your cards back."

There is, again, no indication that Hearst employees are clamoring to cancel their union cards. What there is, in spades, is evidence that the company is terrified of the organizing power of a union. Now that's a fact to consider.

Aaron Brown is a digital editor at Road & Track, a Hearst property. He's also a member of the organizing committee for the new union and tells VICE, "Basically, it’s disappointing that management is still spreading misleading information about the unionization process. It looks like this hastily thrown-together Squarespace website is a response to our official NLRB election filing, which we decided to move forward with last week after not receiving any official response from management on voluntary recognition."

Brown adds:

Like many of my colleagues here at Hearst, I love my job and am super proud to be here, but I also love the protections that I know a fairly negotiated contract could potentially get us. I’ve seen what unions are capable of firsthand as a bargaining rep for GMG’s second contract, and as a witness to what the Guild’s managed to get in the other media shops it’s organized over the past few years.

My coworkers have made an informed decision about this after hundreds of conversations and we’re ready to start bargaining in good faith to reach a great contract.

Neither Hearst management nor the union committee immediately responded to a request for comment from VICE.

This post has been updated with comment from a member of the Hearst Media Union's organizing committee.

Wow, Hearst Set Up a Whole Website Dedicated to Union-Busting syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[yourgamecheats]

Kotaku, Deadspin, GMG Union vs. G/O Media, Explained

Kotaku, Deadspin, GMG Union vs. G/O Media, Explained

If you’re a regular reader of other outlets such as Kotaku, The Onion, Deadspin, and other websites that are under the media company G/O Media, you may have noticed some controversy taking place. So what’s actually going on with these websites and G/O Media?

Earlier this year, Great Hill Partners agreed to acquire Gizmodo Media Groupwith James Spanfeller becoming the chief executive of G/O Media,…