65 Editorial Workers at Wired Are Threatening to Strike

"It's Friday night and I'm meant to be on my first vacation in a year," tweeted a senior writer at Wired. "But instead I've been bargaining with Wired management all day - and will tonight and into the weekend to get a fair deal." 65 editorial workers at Wired are threatening to strike for two days if they can't reach a contract agreement with their publisher, Conde Nast, by July 12. "The employees argue they aren't being paid equitably despite the fact that their work helps drive some of the company's most lucrative traffic days," reports Axios:High-profile writers are joining the union's push, arguing Wired workers should be treated equally to those at other Conde Nast-owned publications, especially when it comes to rights over their work. "While Conde Nast owns our work, it's fair practice to allow writers and creators to share in the bounty when the work they produce is resold to others - and the company has agreed to that principle by giving full-time New Yorker writers a piece of the action when their work is reprinted by others, or sold to filmmakers," Steven Levy, editor at large at Wired and a contributor there since the magazine's 1993 launch, said in a statement provided to Axios by the union. "We've been asking for exactly the same terms that the New Yorker writers got in their contract, but Conde Nast won't even discuss this with us." "It's insulting to imply that Wired creators are less deserving than other Conde employees," he said. "And it's not like our work isn't valued outside the company - a Wired story was the basis of a best-picture-of-the-year Oscar...!" The first union to come out of Conde Nast was on behalf of employees at The New Yorker in June 2018. Ars Technica and Pitchfork launched their own unions the following year. Wired voted to unionize in April 2020.... Earlier this year, Conde Nast employees from publications that hadn't yet unionized, including Vogue, Bon Appetit and others, formed a union representing around 500 editorial workers. The article also notes successful negotiations at tech sites BuzzFeed News and Vox Media - and shares one more strategic detail: The Wired workers threatening to walk are asking their supporters to sign an online petition pledging "no contracts, no clicks." (That is, if the workers fail to reach a deal by Tuesday July 12th, "do not click on any WIRED links or shop through WIRED on July 12th and July 13th. Do not cross the picket line.") But if they do reach a deal by Tuesday, "please continue to click. Support union publications!"

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