David Michael Miller
After nearly six months of organizing, staffers at The Onion and its sister publications on Thursday announced plans to unionize in an effort to preserve and strengthen worker benefits and protections.
About 100 people — 90 percent of the company’s creative staff — have agreed to seek representation under the Writers Guild of America, East. The group includes employees from The Onion — the satirical news site founded in Madison in 1988, but now based in Chicago — along with pop culture site The A.V. Club, viral news parody site ClickHole, new food site The Takeout, parent company Onion Inc.’s art and video departments, and Onion Labs, an in-house advertising agency.
“The last few years have shown us how volatile the digital media industry can be — we’re chasing pageviews one day and video the next, and we have friends who are getting laid off from their jobs,” says Caity PenzeyMoog, deputy managing editor at the A.V. Club and one of the union organizers. “We’ve seen our peers in the industry unionize and how well it’s worked out.”
Conversations about unionization began last summer. As interest grew, organizers contacted the Writers Guild of America for guidance, says Devin Schiff, a staff writer at The Onion who is also involved with the unionization effort. After reaching out to the various departments throughout Onion Inc. and establishing a “collaborative, unified effort,” organizers on March 26 called on management to recognize the union.
“We are dedicated to providing an environment where all our employees can thrive, and we respect their right to unionize,” Onion Inc. spokesman David Ford said in an emailed statement. “We have begun having discussions with the [Writers Guild of America, East] about the path forward and hope to arrive at an arrangement in short order.”
Schiff says he and his colleagues are satisfied with their jobs, pay and benefits, but a union would provide a framework for protecting workers into the future. Organizers also hope to promote transparency within the company’s corporate structure. “I think what propelled us to seize this moment is a synthesis of two things — noticing the successes that other media companies have had by unionizing, and also the hardships that have been wrought at other companies that haven’t had any sort of union backing,” Schiff says. “It’s going to be much easier to try and unionize right now rather than in a situation where lots of bad things have already happened.”
In 2016, Spanish-language media company Univision bought a 40.5 percent stake in Onion Inc. for $27.1 million. That same year, Univision also bought Fusion Media Group and Gawker Media Group, which was renamed Gizmodo Media Group. Univision has struggled since the acquisitions, scrapping its initial public offering earlier in March and eyeing cost-cutting measures — including significant layoffs — in the range of $200 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Union representation has been declining in the U.S. for decades, but there has been a recent resurgence of organized labor among digital media businesses. Editorial staff at Gawker voted to form a union in March 2015, becoming the first digital newsroom to do so and setting off a wave of similar organizing. Fusion staff voted to form a union in 2016. After restructuring by Univision, the Gawker and Fusion union contracts continue via the Gizmodo Media Group contract. The digital media labor organizing has continued, with workers at Vox Media, Vice Media, Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times all forming unions within the last year.
PenzeyMoog says the Gizmodo unionization effort provided a precedent for Onion Inc. employees to organize. She’s optimistic management will recognize the union.
“There’s a dialogue, and we see that as a positive,” she says. “We’re pretty confident they’ll recognize us pretty quickly.”
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the year The Onion was founded. The paper's first issue came out in 1988, not 1998.
