Insider’s Union Goes on Strike Two Months After Layoffs Began

Jun 14, 2023

The strike marks the first at any Axel Springer-owned U.S. publication.

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Hundreds of journalists at Insider, the digital news organization dedicated to business news, have gone on strike.

Members of the outlet's union walked off the job on Friday after it couldn't come to an agreement with management on a new collective bargaining agreement. The union voted on Monday to approve a strike, with 94 percent of the unit in favor of the move.

"Management failed to agree on a fair contract that settles our healthcare ULP and pays us what we're worth," Insider Union tweeted early Friday morning. "Starting now, over 250 Insider employees are on indefinite strike."

"We are looking to get a contract that we deserve, and I think our members recognize that we bring that value to the newsroom," William Antonelli, an Insider reporter, told The Daily Beast on Friday. "I think a strike demonstrates that value."

"Guild members working at Insider are demanding that the company rectify the harm caused by its unlawful decision to unilaterally change their health coverage," said Susan DeCarava, president of the NewsGuild of New York, in a statement. "Many members now are paying hundreds more for essential medications and healthcare while Insider executives pocket the savings. I am proud to support Guild members who refuse to allow over-compensated executives to line their pockets at workers’ expense."

"The strike is unfortunate, but we respect our team's right to do it. We’ve made an excellent offer, and we hope they accept it soon," spokesperson Mario Ruiz said in a statement.

Insider CEO Henry Blodget took the company's stance a step further in a Friday email to staffers, blasting the NewsGuild for having "persuaded" the union to strike. "As I told you two years ago, my only concern about having a union at Insider was that a third-party organization might try to use it to divide us and create an "us vs. them" dynamic at the company," he wrote. "Unfortunately, this is indeed what the Guild has recently tried to do."

He argued the company can only afford to offer what it's proposed at the bargaining table, which included a plan to keep health-care premium increases below 10 percent, a $63,000 salary floor, and tiered wage increases.

"Some companies in our economy are so spectacularly profitable that they could and should share more, but Insider is not among them," Blodget wrote. "Thanks to you all and our clients and audience, we are paying our own way, which in this industry these days is a remarkable accomplishment. But there is no universe in which we would be described as spectacularly profitable (‘very modestly profitable’ would be a fair description). We have finite resources, and they have to support all of us."

Blodget said the company would use its international teams for content in lieu of striking staffers, allowing Insider to "accelerate some initiatives that we believe will help us do an even better job of serving our audience over the long run."

Since the strike authorization vote, the unit had engaged in multiple bargaining sessions with management over its wage and healthcare proposals, including off-the-record meetings through Thursday night. Illustrating how close to the wire conversations were, just before 10:30 p.m. Thursday night, a unit member asked employees to send over payment documents to receive strike pay—even with just under two hours still left to negotiate.

The unit had demanded changes to the company's health-care offerings after Insider switched its provider from United Healthcare to Cigna, raising some members’ premiums. That move was illegal, the union claimed, and it forced some employees to pay more for medications. The union also demanded higher salary floors for some of its reporters.

"The proposed change we made to our employees’ healthcare resulted from our decision to move to a different provider," Ruiz wrote in a statement. "We are confident that the change was not just legal but in the best interests of our employees—including our union members."

Management has stood firm against some of the unit's positions, with chief people officer Jessica Liebman claiming in a Wednesday afternoon email obtained and reviewed by The Daily Beast that the company offered "big concessions in key areas such as wages and healthcare, and the resulting terms are among the best in the industry."

"We remain extremely proud of Insider's team and culture," Liebman wrote. "Despite the Guild's attempts to create an ‘us vs. them’ dynamic at the company, we are still one team. We depend on each other, and we are grateful to each other for our efforts and effectiveness — including our unit members."

Many of those proposals did not sit well with the union, which has employed some creative methods to express its disapproval directly to company brass. One unit member urged members in a bargaining Slack channel to personally text Insider CEO Henry Blodget directly—attaching his personal cell phone number—with personal anecdotes to urge the company to move on its bargaining positions.

"We don't want copy-pasta that he feels like he can delete en masse, but we do want to make sure that we’re continuing to emphasize that management needs to resolve our outstanding healthcare ULP," the unit member wrote.

Clouding the dispute is Insider's April proposal to lay off 60 unit members, which after two months of negotiations was bargained down to a final number of 44 people, including some not originally on the list who offered to take a voluntary buyout, who’d receive a severance package. Those people will leave the company on Monday, Liebman wrote in her Friday email. That meant 22 members on the original list of proposed layoffs would remain at the company, according to a note posted in the unit Slack channel on Thursday.

The strike followed a hastily organized daylong walkout in April over the layoffs, and it is the first for a U.S. publication owned by Axel Springer. The German media company's other U.S. property, Politico, is currently negotiating its first contract. The strike also comes days before a number of Gannett newspaper staffers (including at the Palm Beach Post, Florida Times Union, and Arizona Republic) plan to walk out during the company's shareholder meeting.

It also comes at a time when more and more media outlet staffers have walked out to protest their employers. Unions at The New York Times, NBC News, and Reuters held walkouts over the last year, with the latter agreeing to a contract about a month after voting for a strike.

Insider's spring layoffs also reflect how media companies have responded to a dwindling advertising market. The layoffs preceded BuzzFeed News’ shuttering by mere hours, while outlets like CNN, The Washington Post, NPR, and Vox Media have all also announced various layoffs within the last six months.

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