We recently touched upon how Teamsters President Sean O’Brien began the year by threatening multiple high-profile strikes following the significant wage boosts of last year’s UPS driver’s contract. Of course, union bosses tend to (as the kids say) adopt a “shocked Pikachu” face when companies, faced with increased labor costs as a result of new labor contracts, are forced to cut corners somewhere to stay in business.
Sadly, that “somewhere” often leads to layoffs and closures, and unions react by accusing management of corporate greed but can do very little to prevent layoffs. And don’t expect unions to accept any responsibility.
Since we already mentioned UPS, this week brings news of the parcel delivery company announcing that 12,000 workers will be axed as the company hopes to cut costs by $1 billion. There are many causes for this downswing. Unsurprisingly, UPS is looking to cut costs, which they blame on faltering demand for shipping and higher union labor costs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, these cuts are primarily targeted at management staff worldwide as well as contract workers, UPS executives said Tuesday, adding that those jobs weren’t likely to return even when business picks up. While no union employees are involved in this round of layoffs, O’Brien filed unfair labor charges a month ago when the company laid off 35 union members at the Centennial hub in Kentucky.
Layoffs have been plentiful in other industries, including the U.S. news field, which recently experienced a rough week amid a protracted downswing in advertising dollars. This includes jobs lost at Time Magazine, National Geographic, and the Los Angeles Times, which laid off 100+ workers. Here are some other particularly fraught cases:
- Sports Illustrated announced mass layoffs and the possible shuttering of the entire 70-year-old publication after owners declined to renew a multi-million dollar publishing license. In response, the NewsGuild of NY filed a labor grievance, and union President Susan DeCarava accused the company of “an engineered dispute” to “unlawfully target our members” for termination.
- The Pitchfork Union and NewsGuild of NY issued a similar joint statement after Condé Nast folded the music publication into GQ magazine as part of a larger corporate restructuring, through which 5% layoffs were announced. As a result, several members of the Pitchfork Union were laid off this month due to redundancy.
- Writers Guild of America East members authorized a strike against parent company G/O Media over stalled negotiations for satire website The Onion’s contract, set to expire on Jan. 31. The union is demanding job security and raises, although again, we shall see if across-the-board raises end up triggering layoffs.
- Former employees at The Messenger filed a class action lawsuit against the media company a day after the failed start-up shut down and dismissed all of its roughly 300 employees.
Likewise, the tech industry is seeing similar upheaval, including mergers. Such is the case for Microsoft’s recent announcement of layoffs of 1,900 video game workers, leading to lost jobs for CWA members at ZeniMax, Raven, and Activision Blizzard. One member of ZeniMax Workers United-CWA issued a statement that acknowledged, “Union representation can’t always protect against layoffs,” however, the union still mentioned “layoff protections,” so those false promises look set to continue.
