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from the Retaliation?-or-Post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc? dept.
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established organizations such as The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal and The Daily News have slashed staff or withdrawn from street-level reporting.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: 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.