vox union Via Vox Union
Online OutletsBy Alex Putterman on

After a year of layoffs, pivots and restructurings across media, editorial and video staffers at Vox Media announced Friday they will unionize as part of with the Writers Guild of America, East. Vox Media is composed of eight verticals, including the sports site SB Nation.

In their union announcement, Vox Media staffers wrote that enjoy working at the company but want to see consistency in titles, raises and bonuses; increased transparency; greater diversity and rank-and-file input in major decisions.

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“A Vox Media union will give us the means to maintain everything we love about working for this company, and to have a collective voice when we address anything that may change or founder,” they wrote. “We look forward to bringing Vox Media employees together as an organized unit, and bringing that unit closer to management at the bargaining table and beyond.”

Though SB Nation fulltime staffers will be included in the Vox union, part-time bloggers and managers of team sites will not. As Deadspin reported in August, the team sites that account for much of SB Nation’s traffic operate on small stipends that leave contributors paid either lightly or not at all, despite the assertions of the site’s leadership. Currently, an ex-site manager is suing Vox Media claiming she was an employee and should have been compensated as one.

SB Nation writer Seth Rosenthal tweeted that although the union includes only full-time employees, “it is very important that we do everything in our power to help management address the needs of team-bloggers and other non-full-time employees.” SB Nation staffers reached by Awful Announcing declined to offer details of how the union will affect team sites, pointing us back to the letter announcing the organizing effort, which reads: “Much of Vox Media’s workforce is employed remotely, and organizing allows us to ensure that all of these employees, including part-time staffers and freelance contributors, are treated fairly in terms of compensation and expectation.”

SB Nation writers expressed their excitement over plans to unionize, with many changing their Twitter profile photos to a “Vox Union” logo.

https://twitter.com/alex_kirshner/status/931538791638142976

https://twitter.com/kevinmccauley/status/931551753992011776

About Alex Putterman

Alex is a writer and editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. He has written for The Atlantic, VICE Sports, MLB.com, SI.com and more. He is a proud alum of Northwestern University and The Daily Northwestern. You can find him on Twitter @AlexPutterman.

View all posts by Alex Putterman