June 17, 2021

Cond Nast Agrees to Contract With New Yorker Union, Averting Strike (includes Ars Technica & Pitch)

Source: WSJ

Condé Nast has agreed to its first contract with unionized employees at the New Yorker and two other publications, marking the media company’s first labor agreement in its history and averting a threatened strike after 2½ years of negotiations.

The three-year deal, which also covers staffers at music website Pitchfork and technology publication Ars Technica, raises the salary floor to $60,000 in the final year of the contract, places a cap on healthcare cost increases and establishes a defined 40-hour workweek. It also includes stipulations that employees can be fired only for cause, an issue that had been a sticking point in the contract talks.

“Thanks to our members’ hard work, the era of at-will employment and wage stagnation at the New Yorker is finally over,” said Natalie Meade, unit chair of the New Yorker Union. “Throughout two and half years of negotiations, our union remained steadfast in our commitment to improve the quality of life for ourselves and for future employees.”


The deal comes amid a continuing wave of labor organizing in media companies around the country over the past several years, from digital startups to legacy news organizations like Condé Nast that had never before had unions. Editorial employees at The Wall Street Journal have been unionized since 1937.



Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/conde-nast-agrees-to-contract-with-new-yorker-union-averting-strike-11623889643?mod=hp_lista_pos5

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Congrats to the new union, and I'm glad to see more knowledge workers unionized and fighting for a real 40 hour work week.

May 11, 2021

Vatican warns U.S bishops about rebuking Biden, other Catholic pols

Source: Politico via MSN

The head of the Vatican’s doctrine office is warning U.S. bishops to deliberate carefully and minimize divisions before proceeding with a possible plan to rebuke Roman Catholic politicians such as President Joe Biden for receiving Communion even though they support abortion rights.



Even then, Ladaria advised, the bishops should seek unanimous support within their ranks for any national policy, lest it become “a source of discord rather than unity within the episcopate and the larger church in the United States.”



— He said any new statement should not be limited to Catholic political leaders but broadened to encompass all churchgoing Catholics in regard to their worthiness to receive Communion.

— He questioned the USCCB policy identifying abortion as “the preeminent” moral issue, saying it would be misleading if any new document “were to give the impression that abortion and euthanasia alone constitute the only grave matters of Catholic moral and social teaching that demand the fullest accountability on the part of Catholics.”



Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/vatican-warns-u-s-bishops-about-rebuking-biden-other-catholic-pols/ar-BB1gApD0?ocid=entnewsntp

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Yea... I didn't think Rome was going to go for publicly denying communion.