Vogue owner Condé Nast averts union walkout with deal on day of Met Gala

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Workers at Condé Nast, the media empire behind Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ, announced a tentative agreement has been reached for a first union contract after threatening to stage a walkout during the Met Gala on Monday evening.

The Condé Nast Union, which represents about 540 editorial workers, has been bargaining for a union contract since September 2022. It is affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York.

Condé Nast owns a string of leading magazines and publications, including Glamour, Bon Appétit and Teen Vogue. It also owns the New Yorker, although this has a separate union.

Back in November, as the company bargained with the Condé Nast Union, it announced plans to lay off 5% of its workforce. It then proposed laying off 94 union members. The proposed layoffs further heated contention between both sides in bargaining, with the union threatening to walk off the job.

The union also distributed flyers in New York City, criticizing the opulence of the Vogue editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour - the face and organizer of the fashion industry's biggest night, the Met Gala - throughout her neighborhood to raise public awareness of the contract fight with the tagline, "Anna wears Prada, workers get nada".

Anna Wintour at the Met Gala in New York on 2 May 2022. Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Both sides finally reached a tentative agreement at 3am local time in New York on Monday: the day of this year's Meta Gala, which some workers had threatened to disrupt.

"We made a commitment to do whatever it takes to get our contract," said Mark Alan Burger, Vanity Fair social media manager and a member of the Condé Nast Union bargaining team. "Our pledge to take any action necessary to get our contract, including walking off the job ahead of the Met Gala, and all the actions we took this week, pushed the company to really negotiate.

"We made every effort this week to meet with them and get this contract completed and we're thrilled to say we did it."

Workers will vote on whether to ratify the agreement - which includes $3.6m in wage increases, including a starting salary floor of $61,500 annually, an increase of two weeks of paid parental leave, just cause protections, conversion of subcontracted workers to staff, and negotiated terms of the previously announced layoffs - later this week.

Condé Nast said it was "pleased to come to tentatively agreed terms" with the union. The contract "reflects and supports our core values: our content and journalism; our commitment to diversity and professional development; our industry-leading hiring practices and our competitive wages and benefits," the company added.

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