Last week, when the US journalists' union, the Newspaper Guild, acted to officially join a strike-that-was-not-a-strike on the part of a handful of non-unionised freelance art writers – paid for their work with our publishing enterprise but not for their contributions to the Huffington Post – something changed. My February strike notice was, in essence, a statement of principle, an act of illumination rather than aggression. Some dimly perceptive critics promptly pointed out that this was not really a strike, and where were the strikers to be seen anyway?
Delighted as I was with such misinterpretations, I was content to turn my attention back to publishing deadlines and cutting modest checks to the writers whose work and talent I believe are far more valuable than the pin money they earn from me. I was pleased that a few media outlets memorialised the ethical framework I had offered – and with that, "see ya later". We could all move forward with the business of visual art that we love, now feeling unsullied by an association that had finally come to smell just too, well, stinky.
My return to that comfortable womb of moral integrity was disrupted, however, when Arianna Huffington responded to a question in exactly the wrong way: "The idea of going on strike when no one really notices. Go ahead, go on strike." Oops. Suddenly, it seemed, everyone noticed.
Enter the Newspaper Guild, a national union of writers and journalists: with 26,000 members, it is the nation's largest and, unbeknownst to this backwater publisher, in the throes of addressing the most existentially threatening crisis to the journalistic profession in well over a century. Hardly a Johnny-come-lately to this issue, they have been calling for journalists, employed or otherwise, to refrain from providing free writing for more than just the Huffington Post since well before it was bought by AOL. This has been a growing problem over the last decade as newspapers have noticeably shrunk or gone into bankruptcy in droves. Staff writers have been laid off by the thousands. The internet has inadvertently wreaked havoc on the economic models that had driven not only industry profit, but a structure of news dissemination that was conducted by a highly-educated and well-compensated class of professionals. To the horror of many in the business, the ranks of member writers crumbled like the Maginot Line.
The AOL/Huffington Post deal has, at last, provided an unlikely rallying point.
The ethical dissonance sounded by Huffington prompted a reaction, so now we really do have a strike. Or perhaps it's a boycott. Or maybe it's something else. But we quibble. A report posted on TechCrunch by Alex Alvarez last week suggests that AOL/Huffington Post is working on an internal solution that distinguishes "professional journalists" from "bloggers". This is a start, but not good enough – given that a large number of these "bloggers" are, in fact, professional journalists. If one part of the answer is to hire select individuals to an expanded paid staff, another part is to compensate many others who are effectively working freelance right now. There remains an equal need to distinguish between editorial content and press releases. And then, it is entirely possible that this is a response with no more purpose than to defang the Newspaper Guild, to negotiate without formally sitting down while preserving the plausible deniability that they have given in to any demands whatsoever.
Meanwhile, Ann Belser's recent story at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette named labour leaders Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO and Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers as Huffington Post bloggers who may or may not honour the "virtual picket line". Communications Workers of America spokesperson Candice Johnson is quoted: "This [action] doesn't include organisations or people from an organisation who are advocating for a particular cause." Squirrelly spin on why these good men should be an exception to the rule is not very helpful to anybody. Permit me to suggest that their cause is intertwined with that of the Newspaper Guild, and they need to start by acknowledging that. Yes, they should certainly be permitted to cross that virtual line … as long as they are willing to help apply the pressure.
Both the Newspaper Guild and these labour leaders must recognise that theirs is a natural alliance from which both parties stand to benefit. This is not about whether public spokespersons should be denied access to their preferred megaphones, nor is it about their use of online or social media overshadowing the legitimate interests of a professional constituency. These parties must put their heads together to provide the best ideas for fairly structured compensation in an environment of robust free speech. The Newspaper Guild's strategy can no more be to restrict access to new digital media to paid professionals only, than the AFL-CIO's labour strategy can be limited to their own members' pay scale and benefits exclusively. Each party must ask the other how best to further the greater interests of both, and be willing to take steps to bolster one another.
The more difficult question is how to apply this principle of mutual benefit to AOL/Huffington Post and other companies that regard themselves as natural adversaries to organised labour. That is exactly where my own appeal intersected, because Arianna Huffington has so publicly and frequently voiced her solidarity with the working and middle class. I have argued, and will continue to assert, that appropriate labour agreements made with properly authorised negotiating partners such as the Newspaper Guild are good for both parties, particularly within a progressive framework. Not just morally, though Huffington herself has made the moral case, but because both workers and company come out ahead.
Let us cease accepting the case for easily replaceable parts, even if there are 100 workers prepared to be exploited for every single one who refuses to play along. It is wrong. The calibre, morale and dignity of the workplace is not only better for the people in it, but it also improves the company's prospects for success.