Condé Nast’s unionized workers aren’t done protesting the controversial firings of several of their colleagues. And they’ve taken their fight to a celebration of the company’s most venerated publication, The New Yorker.
More than two-dozen unionized New Yorker staffers descended on a special screening of the Netflix documentary The New Yorker at 100 at Manhattan’s Paris Theater n Thursday evening to protest what the union has termed “illegal firings.” On the sidewalk outside the venue, the group handed out stickers with the union’s logo and leaflets that decried the New Yorker “union-busting like it’s 1925.”
The leaflets called for audience members to wear the union stickers and to ask a pointed question about the terminations at the screening.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to The New Yorker and Condé Nast for comment.
At issue is the termination of four union workers and the suspension of five others on Nov. 5. That day, a group of unionized Condé Nast employees confronted the company’s chief people officer, Stan Duncan, at the One World Trade Center offices over recent layoffs at Teen Vogue and other brands.
A video that captures at least part of the ensuing exchange, first reported by The Wrap and confirmed by THR, shows a tense conversation from which Duncan walked away. The company said in a statement that the confrontation “violated company policies,” describing the workers’ action as “behavior that crosses the line into targeted harassment and disruption of business operations.” In addition to its disciplinary measures, the company filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the NewsGuild of New York, the labor organization behind the Condé Nast union and the New Yorker union.
The union countered that its members were engaging in activity protected under federal law. The firings were described as “a flagrant breach of the Just Cause terms of our contract and an unprecedented violation of [members’] federally protected rights.”
Among the workers dismissed after the confrontation was Jasper Lo, a senior fact-checker at The New Yorker who the union says briefly appears in The New Yorker at 100. Lo’s firing has reportedly been highly controversial at the magazine, with top writers including Susan Orlean and Jay Caspian Kang protesting the decision, according to reporting by The Washington Post.
The Paris Theater has advertised that the screening on Thursday will feature a conversation with the film’s director, Marshall Curry, as well as its executive producer Judd Apatow and New Yorker editor David Remnick. The New Yorker at 100, a celebratory portrait of the publication’s long history and recent success gaining amid a brutal business environment for media companies, debuts on Netflix on Friday.
In a statement about the leafletting action, New Yorker union co-chair Lauren Harris called for the magazine to “live up to its reputation for tenacity — not only in its journalism, but also in protecting the rights of its workers.”
This isn’t the first time that unionized workers at Condé Nast have publicly protested the terminations, and it may not be the last. In mid-November, the NewsGuild of New York held a rally outside Condé Nast’s offices attended by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who called for the workers’ reinstatement.
New Yorker union co-chair Daniel Gross, who appears in the Netflix film, described the company’s conduct in a statement as “an embarrassment to the celebrated magazines that it owns.” He added, “By retaliating against journalists for peaceful and protected activity, the company is trampling on our rights, our union contract, and the independence and integrity of The New Yorker. We will not be intimidated, and we will win.”