Members of the Crooked Media Employees Union are conducting a one-day walkout Monday after greater than a 12 months of contract negotiations with the progressive podcasting and media community.
The first asks for the contract embody aggressive wage minimums, annual cost-of-living changes and safeguards in opposition to layoffs. Greater than 95 % of the 61-member bargaining unit, who’re affiliated with Writers Guild of America East signed the walkout pledge, and the union members say they won’t settle for a contract with out these provisions.
Crooked Media was based in 2017 by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor, with Pod Save America as its flagship podcast. The corporate has grown to incorporate greater than a dozen podcasts, together with Lovett or Depart It and Pod Save the World, as nicely a voting and political motion committee, Vote Save America, and extra. Crooked Media voluntarily acknowledged the employees’ union in February 2023.
Contract negotiations started in Could 2023. Leah Barteldes, who works with Vote Save America in D.C., stated members of the unit determined to conduct the walkout as a result of there are a number of areas within the contract negotiations that they’ve but to see motion on.
“We wish a contract that displays each the work that we’re placing in and the financial panorama. We’re on the lookout for truthful, aggressive wage minimums, price of dwelling changes yearly that replicate inflation, layoff protections, together with different advantages and insurance policies that embody the progressive values that we imagine Crooked has,” Barteldes stated.
Charlotte Landes, an audio engineer at Crooked Media in Los Angeles and a member of the bargaining committee, added that given the corporate’s progressive roots, the hope is that this contract might present a method ahead for others within the podcasting and media business.
“Everyone knows Crooked is a progressive media firm, espouses progressive values, and we actually suppose that Crooked principally has a chance to set an business normal, present everyone else the way it’s achieved, the way it may very well be if we select to reside these values,” Landes stated.
Whereas Bloomberg just lately revealed an article about clashes on the firm between youthful, extra liberal staffers and what they noticed because the extra reasonable founders over their political positions, guild insiders with information of the negotiations stated that was not associated to the union’s present actions or positioning. Whereas the 2 sides have change into extra energized over the previous few weeks, the general temper continues to be cordial, they stated.
The transfer comes after the WGAE filed an Unfair Labor Apply cost final week in opposition to Crooked Media with the Nationwide Labor Relations Act, saying the corporate had purposefully excluded a number of members from the bargaining unit.
The corporate has additionally been producing an elevated content material load forward of the presidential election, with Pod Save America including a further weekly present in addition to elevated manufacturing wants for the reveals hosted by the founders, along with the creation of recent podcasts.
“That sort of elevated workload has completely led to folks realizing that what they do for this firm is efficacious and that they deserve to profit,” Landes stated.
Regarding the layoff protections, Crooked Media has not confronted main layoffs itself, Landes stated, however there have been layoffs and the protections are supposed to converse to the overall uncertainty going through media corporations.
The objective is to succeed in a contract settlement by Aug. 8.