On Thursday, HarperCollins’ unionized staff started an open-ended strike in protest of administration’s refusal to conform to a good contract. This open-ended strike comes a number of months after a one-day strike the employees held this previous July. Staff at one of many world’s largest publishing homes have been with no contract since April, and so they have additionally filed an unfair labor observe cost with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board. The employees, who’re represented by United Auto Staff Native 2110, are demanding that their contract embrace a residing wage which accounts for inflation, and union safety provisions. UAW 2110 represents some 250 HarperCollins staff.
I spoke to a HarperCollins employee on the picket line. “Administration has made no strikes in the direction of a contract, and so they’ve rejected all our proposals as not being reasonable,” she instructed me. “We’re not speaking about monumental sums of cash right here. We’re speaking a couple of residing wage.”
I’m a employee in publishing and a member of UAW 2110, and after working in a number of non-union publishing homes, I’ve seen firsthand how important organized labor is to an business like publishing. A chorus on the HarperCollins picket line is “Ardour doesn’t pay the lease!”
Administration at HarperCollins claims that the corporate’s staff obtain a good and aggressive wage, citing a current 25 p.c improve in entry-level salaries. This improve went into impact on January 18, 2021, following negotiations with the union on January 15, the earlier Friday. What the corporate’s declare obscures, nevertheless, is that salaries have been raised from $36,000 to $45,000, neither of that are truthful or livable salaries for full-time staff, particularly with inflation and quickly rising prices of residing. In response to the identical HarperCollins employee, administration claims that this two-year-old wage improve is satisfactory and proof of the corporate’s goodwill, since administration handed it “with out concessions from the union.” Publishing staff are for essentially the most half required to dwell in extraordinarily costly cities like New York and London — a part of how the business sustains itself is thru its picture of glamorous cosmopolitan erudition — and firms like HarperCollins, which have operated remotely all through the pandemic, at the moment are mandating that staff return to their places of work.
At most publishing homes — significantly non-union homes — the hours are lengthy, the workload is immense, and the pay is low; administration dangles the doubtful promise of profession development in entrance of junior workers to be able to squeeze extra work out of them. This exploitation operates by leeching off the employees’ “ardour for books.” The exact same love and take care of making books and supporting authors that publishing workers deliver to their work is used towards them, to worsen their working circumstances. If somebody expresses dissatisfaction with these circumstances, she’s chastised for bringing vulgar materials issues into one thing so exalted as making and promoting books — and reminded that there are one million fresh-faced current faculty graduates clamoring for a job at a publishing home.
UAW 2110 president Olga Brudastova instructed Publishers Weekly, “Late final week, the corporate communicated to us over e-mail that they aren’t fascinated with scheduling extra bargaining periods and are rejecting our newest proposal. We now get info that administration is instructing non-union staff to keep away from any point out of the strike and is planning to override our members’ out-of-office messages that point out it.”
In a leaked memo written to HarperCollins workers by a Senior Vice President of “HarperCollins Company Communications,” unionized staff are persistently known as “United Auto Staff” in anti-union tactic referred to as “third-partying” — by casting precise staff of the corporate as exterior brokers, since they’re represented by a union. The e-mail states that “HarperCollins has applied plans to make sure that operations proceed uninterrupted throughout a possible strike.”
However it might seem that the employees have the assist of the publishing world at giant, and so they’re hopeful they’ll win a good contract. “The response from the group has been actually constructive,” this employee instructed me. “Authors have been writing to the corporate and posting on social media. They know what it takes to make a great e-book. And a few brokers have even been holding submissions…. There’s lots of deal with us now from publishers. That is essentially the most excessive factor we might do, however that is about all of us getting what we deserve.”
In October, after staff filed the unfair labor observe cost because of administration’s refusal to reply to a request for info by the bargaining unit throughout negotiations, HarperCollins laid off an unspecified variety of staff, together with six union members. HarperCollins, which is owned by the Rupert Murdoch-founded mother or father firm Information Corp, made document income throughout the fiscal yr ending June 2022. Gross sales rose 10 p.c over fiscal yr 2021 — as much as $2.2 billion. Regardless of this, Information Corp cites inflation and provide chain prices for the layoffs and the modest wage will increase — neglecting the affect of inflation on the underpaid staff that made these document income potential.
HarperCollins staff are calling on the group to assist the strike in quite a lot of methods, together with donating to the strike fund and writing to [email protected] to specific solidarity with the placing staff. Should you’re an creator, freelancer, e-book reviewer, bookstagrammer, or agent, the employees are asking that you don’t “cross the picket line” — maintain your submissions to any HarperCollins editor till a good contract is reached; don’t take HarperCollins contracts throughout the strike (however don’t renege on contracts both); and maintain your evaluations, blurbs, nominations, or every other protection or content material till staff get a good contract. The publishing business depends on its extremely gifted, sensible, hardworking, and considerate staff to make the books that deliver us such pleasure. It’s time they acquired their due.
