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DNAinfo and Gothamist Are Shut Down After Vote to Unionize
A week ago, reporters and editors in the combined newsroom of DNAinfo and Gothamist, two of New York City's leading digital purveyors of local news, celebrated victory in their vote to join a union.
On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut them down.
At 5 p.m., a post went up on the sites from Mr. Ricketts announcing the decision. He praised them for reporting "tens of thousands of stories that have informed, impacted and inspired millions of people." But he added, "DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure."
[...] in the financially daunting era of digital journalism, there has been no tougher nut to crack than making local news profitable, a lesson Mr. Ricketts, who lost money every month of DNAinfo's existence, is just the latest to learn. In New York City, the nation's biggest media market, established organizations such as The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal and The Daily News have slashed staff or withdrawn from street-level reporting. The Voice stopped publishing its print edition in September.
What about The Daily Planet and Gotham Globe?
Gothamist's NY Writing Staff Votes to Unionize; Owner Shutters All *ist Sites
Deadspin reports:
Joe Ricketts, TD Ameritrade founder, billionaire, and father of Chicago Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, shut down the local news network of DNAinfo and Gothamist sites today, a week after the writers voted to unionize.
[...] With the sites' articles functionally locked, the reported 115 newly jobless writers now have no clips [to which they can refer potential employers] as they search for work.
Deadspin has scathing comments about Ricketts's explanation for his action.
The Los Angeles Daily News reports:
Angelenos hoping to read the latest local reporting from LAist.com [on November 2] were instead greeted by a letter from the news site's CEO, announcing he had shuttered the parent media company and all of its local news sites.
[...] [Ricketts bought news company DNAinfo in 2010 and, in March 2017, DNAinfo] purchased Gothamist, which ran news sites in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.
[...] Julia Wick, editor-in-chief at LAist, [...] said she and her Los Angeles team supported the New York staff's decision to unionize. Originally, she said, all five Gothamist sites planned to join the union, but the Chicago newsroom dropped out, ending the collective effort.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 07 2017, @03:23AM (9 children)
That's nice. How far up your employer's arse is your nose? "Nice little job you have there, would be a shame if something were to happen to it." "Oh, do not attempt to call the police or exercise your democratic right to organize in defense of your rights. I know where you live."
Darn Thugs! And then there is the Unions.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fyngyrz on Tuesday November 07 2017, @09:11AM (8 children)
Unions aren't very (at all) democratic.
That last step is what forming a union tries to accomplish.
So I bloody well fire you, and anyone of like mind. Or stop feeding money to the project and go find something else to do, and the business evaporates (which is what we saw here.)
That's what a business owner does in a democracy. Because in a democracy, people have control over stuff they own. Not "the masses" or random business enterprises they happen to be doing business with – and make no mistake, you're doing business with your employer and vice-versa. You can stop doing business with them at any time. And so can they.
Employees are just that – not voters. Not unless I offer them that when I hire them, anyway.
If I own a pizza-making enterprise where I've hired you to make pizza and you decide you don't like the way the business wants to make pizza, or you no longer like what I'm paying you, then go elsewhere. Any attempts to blackmail me into changing my recipe or pay you differently will, and should, end in a my-pizza-less existence for you. You can ask for things, and you can suggest things, but you can't force things. You have exactly one legitimate option if you don't like my decisions: quit.
Employment is not assignment as a voter. It's just not. Unions are the absolute wrong way to solve problems. They're a bad idea from word one. You want a particular environment for business, then talk to your legislators (and quit voting for idiots.) The reason why that's a good solution is because it creates a similar environment for all businesses. The playing field must be absolutely level.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday November 07 2017, @12:36PM (4 children)
You know, I do absolutely agree with your description. And - from my experience in the US - unions there have truly become parasites: looking out for their own good, at the expense of the very employees that they are supposed to represent.
It wasn't always that way. Once upon a time, unions provided a counterbalance to exploitative employers. You can fire one employee, but you can't fire 1000 of them without endangering your company (and few companies are willing to just close their doors). Today, labor laws provide much of the protection that old-time unions fought to get.
However, pure capitalism will find a way. Short-term thinking, management by spreadsheet: cut costs at any cost. I'm now out of touch with the US labor market, but I am still indirectly involved in the UK. It seems to me that the UK is developing a new two-class society: people with permanent jobs, and temps. More and more companies are turning large parts of their workforce into temps. You are hired for a day, a week, or even a month or a year. But you have zero job security, no guarantee of how many hours you will work, no retirement benefits, nothing but your hourly wage that could disappear at any moment. I've know people who worked as a "temp" for the same company, for several years.
Now, it's easy to say "just leave", but if *all* companies in your field hire only temps? That's just a totally shitty way to live. And it *is* exploitative: What was intended as a stopgap to allow companies to hire personnel for crunches (like the Christmas rush) has been expanded into a general loophole: a way to avoid paying benefits or offering job security to large parts of their workforces. If this continues, I imagine that we will see union rise again, as a way for millions of "temps" to demand benefits for the jobs they are, in fact, doing.
History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 07 2017, @03:27PM (3 children)
Just leave. It's not as easy to do as to say, but it's far from impossible.
Pure capitalism also has rewards for people who don't do that. One should consider what's going on that such behavior is viable in the long run. The answer is risk mitigation by government such as "too big to fail", public pensions, etc. When you have someone else eliminating future risk, you don't need to think about it any more.
(Score: 2, Touché) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 07 2017, @03:54PM (2 children)
How's the view from your ivory tower?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:06PM
Why are you trying to imply that job hopping is not a real world thing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 07 2017, @09:21PM
You could go to, I dunno, some civilized country like Switzerland, where they have unions and public health care?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 07 2017, @01:35PM (2 children)
In many situations it goes like this:
Company hires person to do work for $$. There was no mention of health hazards, unpaid overtime, abusive bosses, ... or any other item that makes the work the person was hired to do much less pleasant or desirable. If known upfront, the person may not have taken the job or demanded more $$$.
Person finds out other coworkers see the same issues and they try to resolve them, such that the original contract can be honored. Company ignores the workers who then form a union, frustrated about the company breaking the spirit of their contracts and for ignoring them, so they start making demands to put things right.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday November 07 2017, @06:10PM (1 child)
Fine. Now you know. Life's no different for you outside of the job today than it was on the day you were originally interviewed, or if it is, it's your responsibility, not your employer's. You don't have a job you like (or any job at all, perhaps.) Quit, and try to get the job back at a different level of compensation, or interview / hire on elsewhere. If you're going to abrogate your agreement, that's fine. But lets be clear what your agreement was: you agreed to do work X for Y compensation. Now you don't like it. Fine. Then quit.
Yes, some jobs suck. No, that doesn't give you any right to change them via blackmail other than the ONE thing you legitimately have, which is the agreement to do X for Y, which you can end by quitting (or by being fired).
If you try involving others for whom you are not responsible for their employment in blackmail against the employer, the employer should have every right to let you go ASAP.
Man up. And learn about a job before taking it. It's not hard to do. Not doing so is stupid.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday November 08 2017, @03:27PM
Yep. And all a traditional union does is unify a large block of employees together to say "shape up, or we'll all quit".
It doesn't give them any power to *force* things to change, the boss is always free to say "Fine, quit then, I'll hire new people.". And if they demand more than their labor is worth, that's exactly what will happen. If they *are* able to get changes made, then that means that the increased employee cost associated with those changes is still less than or equal to the value they're delivering to the business, and that the boss had been abusing the leverage inherent in their position of more concentrated power to cheat the employees and seize an unfair percentage of the value they produce.