Give A Little, Get A Little

As we passed the two-year mark in our journey for a strong first contract, we made significant progress over two fairly productive bargaining sessions that resulted in two new tentative agreements (TAs).

Like with any contract negotiation, we had to give management a little bit of what they wanted to win some key protections for our members. But after months of essentially refusing to meaningfully engage with our proposals on benefits, management is actually bargaining with us over the specifics on paid and unpaid leaves, health insurance, and our 401(k) plans.

Here’s the latest:

UNPAID LEAVES: We landed on what we’re calling a ~spiritual TA~ on book leave and other unpaid leaves! We’re still configuring the precise wording, but we’ve agreed on some major wins for union members. Among the biggest: Employees will not have to use their PTO before taking unpaid leave (though we did agree that our members will use comp time before taking leave).

We also got management to agree that after one year of working in the newsroom, employees will be eligible for three months of unpaid leave for academic, creative, or personal reasons. This leave can be taken in one-month increments and cannot be unreasonably denied.

TRAINING & CAREER DEVELOPMENT: Some more good news! We *finally* came to a TA on this proposal, which covers the intersection of discipline and traffic metrics. This was a central issue in our walkout and the pressure we put on management resulted in significant movement and an agreement that we are confident will protect employees. 🥳

With a minor exception for commerce writers, no union employees can be subject to performance-related discipline in connection with any revenue or traffic-related goals. We agreed to management’s language that commerce writers will not be disciplined “solely” as a result of revenue or traffic related goals or metrics, and we also got them to agree to language that makes it clear that meeting revenue and traffic goals is largely out of the control of the writer and that these metrics “shall not supersede the employee’s editorial ethical obligations.”

WAGES: Now time for the bad news: Management introduced an infuriating new concept in their latest counter on pay, splitting the salary minima between overtime-eligible employees and exempt employees. This only reinforces the hierarchical system we set out to dismantle in this contract! They’ve proposed a minimum salary of $50,000 for OT-eligible employees and $53,000 for exempt employees. (Notably, OT is not guaranteed and has to be approved by management!)

There is some good news, though. Management finally agreed to a graduated wage increase system with increases ranging from 3% for the lowest paid employees to 1% for highest paid employees (we have proposed higher increases ranging from 5% to 3%). They did, however, continue to push for a merit pool of 1% of the bargaining unit payroll at management’s discretion. This is something we feel is unnecessary to bargain over, as we’ve already agreed that management is free to give people raises beyond the contractual obligations.

REDUCTIONS IN FORCE: This is an area where we're continuing to argue over numbers. Should layoffs happen, management wants them to take effect within four weeks. The union is pushing for a minimum of at least six weeks. We're close on this one, though!

HOURS & OVERTIME: Management has proposed that comp time should only be awarded for work done on a scheduled day off, despite the fact that this is not how most employees actually earn comp time. This is frustrating, since it’s more restrictive than current policy, and our members tend to earn comp time for working extra long days rather than for working on a scheduled day off. We believe comp time should be awarded for additional work no matter when it occurs.

The current comp time policy is that it’s awarded in four-hour chunks, and management has been proposing to keep this, but we’re still pushing for comp time to be measured and granted hour for hour instead.

401(k): Management has really dug in about not wanting to improve our 401(k) in any way and offered in their latest counter only that our employer matching would be improved if it’s improved across the company. They did at least propose that they would not let the matching for the unit dip below the 2021 baseline — an abysmal 25% matching up to 3% of the employee contribution. That is still miles apart from our proposal of 100% matching up to 6%.

We find management’s position unacceptable and at odds with the story BuzzFeed wants to tell about itself. As the company has matured, the benefits it offers employees should grow in tandem. Our newsroom has new parents who have to think about their families’ futures. If this company is serious about retaining talent in a way that encourages people to spend their careers here, it must offer a competitive 401(k) plan.

2 Years 2 Bargain

This month marks two years since our first bargaining session and (hopefully!) the beginning of the end of our fight to win a strong first contract for this newsroom.

After our very powerful walkout last month, management made notable movements on some of the key issues we organized around, like whether writers can face discipline for not meeting traffic or revenue goals. We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to make some progress on these proposals soon.

Here are the details:

OUTSIDE WORK: This is the proposal regarding the creative work we do outside of our BuzzFeed News jobs. In our latest version, we agreed to get management approval for things that relate to our actual jobs (freelance articles, speaking engagements on our beat, etc.). But for all things not related to our jobs — eg. makeup tutorials, stand-up comedy shows — we continued to insist that we do not need to seek management approval.

Management seemed more open than ever to our proposal, saying for the first time that they were open to a policy that, in some cases, did not require management approval for outside work. That unto itself is a huge win for us, and absolutely a result of our walkout. Still, in their counter, they held onto the idea that any work that is competitive with BuzzFeed as a whole (rather than just with News) would require management approval. We once again reiterated our stance and concerns with this expansive, undefined restriction.

WAGES: We held on our previous proposal of a newsroom-wide salary minimum of $70,000 and annual guaranteed wage increases from (GWI) 3% to 5%. Management has argued, however, that if we push for this system for everyone in the union, they won’t be able to give raises beyond what’s guaranteed in the contract. This is not true! And frankly it’s anti-union — and anti-millennial — propaganda! It also ignores the fact that they’ve already agreed to language that management can give raises beyond the GWI. Plus, they aren’t even arguing that they can’t afford to pay us more, just simply that they don’t want to. Oof.

TRAINING & CAREER DEVELOPMENT: In their latest counter, management changed only one word from our last proposal to say that commerce writers will not be disciplined “solely” in connection with traffic or discipline. This is significant movement on their part and comes after we made this a central issue in our walkout. It is the only outstanding issue left in this proposal, and we are hopeful we can come to a tentative agreement on this issue soon.

REDUCTIONS IN FORCE: We are still negotiating how and when people should be notified about layoffs— something that, unfortunately, we are no stranger to. We have proposed that affected employees should be given two weeks’ notice, but only after a 30-day discussion period with the NewsGuild. Management has proposed that these two notification periods should be concurrent.

We are also still negotiating the terms for rehiring employees who are laid off. Management has proposed that a specific employee, once laid off, could only be rehired from a recall list if their “specific” position is available again. That’s too narrow for us. We believe an employee should also be recalled for a comparable position for which they are reasonably qualified.

EXPENSES & EQUIPMENT: Even after nearly two years of working remotely because of the pandemic, management is still telling us that they anticipate a “normal” future of work. We believe our contract should reflect the ongoing situation and have proposed cementing our current monthly $125 remote work stipend. In management’s latest counter, they proposed a $45 cell phone stipend (which we received prior to the current stipend) and suggested remote employees could expense up to $65 of home internet costs.

They also proposed that if any employee outside the bargaining unit received a monthly stipend that was greater than $45 + the possible additional $65, then that would be guaranteed for everyone in the unit as well. In our last counter, we accepted the stipend equity for those inside and outside the unit, but we proposed that all employees should get a $60 cell phone stipend, plus a $65 stipend for remote employees (rather than force them to file a monthly expense). We also proposed that the WFH stipend should be locked in until most office-based employees return to working in person.

DERIVATIVE RIGHTS: Management recently gave us their first response to this proposal, which we first presented in * checks notes * ... April 2021. 😕

The issue at hand is what level of control employees have over their intellectual property when BuzzFeed or a third party wants to turn it into a movie, TV show, podcast, etc. The company has proposed barring employees from soliciting derivative productions, meaning that if you wanted to pitch an article of yours as a podcast episode or a book, for example, you couldn’t email your friend at This American Life or send it to an agent you’re in touch with. The company would have to do it for you. Pretty wack!

The company also presented specifics about how much money employees would receive if their work is optioned for production, but the specifics weren’t great. They proposed that authors receive only 10% of option payments and stated that they wouldn’t get any royalties. It’s nice to finally see some details from them on this, but their proposals are well below what we believe employees are entitled to.

(If the story of a business where the executives amassed a fortune while the people who did the day to day work only saw a fraction of those proceeds interests you, check out the documentary The Rise and Fall of LulaRoe, based on an investigation by BuzzFeed reporter Stephanie McNeal. Watch it on Discovery+!)

Hot Bargaining Summer

In between beach trips and park hangs, our unstoppable bargaining committee continued the hard work towards winning us our first contract. August and September saw us come closer to an agreement with BuzzFeed on some important issues — but our work isn’t done yet.

Expenses

This was a proposal we made in the early days of bargaining that management only recently responded to for the first time. We presented some new language to address issues that some of our unit members have had in recent months, including creating a process for signing affidavits for lost receipts. Additionally, we proposed a $150 ongoing stipend for remote employees, and stuck with our previous proposal of a $100 stipend for all non-remote employees for phone bills and laptops.

Training

There is one last major sticking point with this proposal: The use of traffic and revenue goals in employee performance reviews.

We continue to argue that traffic should never be considered an indication of poor performance for employees, but management responded by saying that would preclude them from even discussing traffic with employees. That is not true, and not what we’re proposing in any way.

Successorship

This is another area where management threw out about 95% of our proposal. 

In our most recent counter, we made some movement in management’s direction, taking out a section that included the union’s right of first refusal to buy the company if management was looking to sell. But we stuck to existing language for the most part, including provisions about notice to any purchaser about the union and our contract, notice to the union about any sale, and a new provision about keeping our work available in a public format as a condition of any sale. (We don’t want our hard work to just disappear!)

Outside Work

Management has continued to dig in on their stance that all “content-related work” that unit employees do must be approved by BuzzFeed. And this doesn’t just apply to work that could conflict with the newsroom’s journalism but all of BuzzFeed’s (very expansive!) business as a whole. This is more strict than the current practice of right of first refusal for journalistic works.

In our proposal, we made a differentiation between all outside work and “competitive work” and applied some of the proposed approval process from management’s counter to competitive work, including extending the timeline for management’s response from three to five days and accepting their offer for a written explanation should management deny the request.

Hiring

We’ve had the most back and forth on this proposal , as well as repeated actions from the unit demonstrating how serious we are about it, and that tenacity seems to be paying off! Management finally gave us a percentage commitment: While the union has pushed for 50% of candidates who make it to the second round of interviews be from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, management has refused for months. In their latest counter, though, they proposed that that figure be 35%.

In our latest counter, we accepted a few tweaks they proposed, including moving off our proposal that the company pay bonuses to people on on the diversity committee who help with hiring and for unit members who sit on hiring panels, though we reiterated to them that this remains incredibly important to us and we plan to continue to push them on it outside of bargaining.

Remote Work

We’ve come to an agreement that employees who request to work remotely in a state where BuzzFeed currently has approved remote work will not have that request unreasonably denied. Employees who want to work in other states can still request to work remotely, but there will be a different standard of approval for these requests because of the added logistics of setting up taxes in a new state.

We’re still going back and forth about the distance an employee would have to travel to have their expenses covered. Management proposed 120 miles, which is quite a hike — for context, under their proposal, an employee required to come to the NYC office from Philly (just 94 miles away) would have to pay for their own travel. We proposed 75 miles in our last counter, and are confident we can soon come to an agreement on this important proposal.

Disappointed Is An Understatement

Last month, management finally presented us with economic responses that were discouraging, incomplete, rife with inaccuracies, and outright insulting. While we made progress on some noneconomic issues, the lack of care taken to meaningfully engage with our proposals on benefits, leaves, wages, and other topics was disheartening to see after more than a year and a half of negotiations.

Here’s the gist:

BENEFITS: Instead of responding to our individual proposals on benefits, management gave us a single counter proposing that they would be able to change our benefits and leave policies at any time, including time off, family and medical leave, disability leave, parental leave, health insurance, and 401(k) plans, without having to negotiate with the union.

Management told us — as they have in the past — that because they handle benefits on a company-wide level, they won’t bargain over any policies or changes specific to union members. We are, honestly, baffled by the company digging in on such an unproductive position, especially given that our proposals on benefits were deliberately practical and restrained — largely aiming to lock in the status quo, with a few key improvements. Simply refusing to have a conversation about these policies is not an acceptable way to bargain.

WAGES: One major issue we want to address in our contract is the pay disparity between the production-oriented teams that work on all of our content (art, copy, operations, curation) and the reporters and editors in our newsroom. Our wages proposal took a big step toward addressing this gap.

But in their response, management — while they took some superficial steps to reduce the number of different reporter titles in the newsroom — preserved these huge pay gaps between teams. When we asked why, the company’s VP of HR told us they believe those roles should be paid less because they focus on “routine tasks” and don’t require as much creativity or independent decision-making. As anyone in our newsroom could tell you, this is an insulting and inaccurate way to describe the work of those teams. 

Across the board, the salary minimums management proposed for each title not only don’t improve pay in the newsroom, but are actually much lower than what our members are paid now under the company’s existing “leveling” system (ranging from 8% to 60% less than what people currently make). So that means that under management’s proposal, not a single person in the newsroom would receive a raise as a result of implementing new minimums. (For comparison, the minimums the union proposed would have increased wages for about 65% of unit members.) Instead, management proposed that unit members would only get a 1% guaranteed annual wage increase (along with any merit raise that each person might or might not receive, at the company’s discretion) which is much lower than the established past practice  of around a 3% raise each year.

Needless to say, we didn’t form a union to secure a 1% increase in total pay. Management beginning our negotiations over wages with such a low-ball proposal, which stakes out a position far below the established status quo, is not bargaining in good faith.

HOURS AND OVERTIME: Management countered our proposed 35-hour week (7-hour days) — which is union standard — and proposed a 40-hour week (8-hour days) instead.

They also rejected all our other proposals, including provisions about employees being able to decline work outside standard hours, guaranteed comp time/overtime, expansion of the teams and titles eligible for overtime (they propose that only hourly employees would be eligible, and eligible titles are still TBD), measuring comp time in 1-hour increments (as opposed to half or whole days), and employees being able to request accrued comp time be paid out yearly. On that final point, many of us are unable to take comp time as time off given the unrelenting pace and workload of our jobs in the newsroom, and it’s disappointing to see that not acknowledged.

REDUCTIONS IN FORCE: We put together a very thoughtful and reasonable proposal about how layoffs would be handled in the future, and management cut about 90% of it. Management wants full discretion to decide who to lay off, based on “special skills, performance, qualifications, and seniority.” They did agree, at least, that where other factors are similar, seniority shall govern. 

They also cut and did not even engage with our proposed idea of a recall list, so that if the company begins hiring again soon after layoffs, the people laid off who are qualified for those jobs would be offered a chance to return. After we pointed out that our amazing colleagues in the Canada union have already come to an agreement on recall language, and that this is a huge concern given the company’s history of laying people off only to turn around and rehire for very similar jobs just a few months later, management did then say that they were potentially open to the concept and would reconsider it in their next counter.

SEVERANCE: We originally proposed a minimum of 16 weeks of severance with an additional two weeks of pay for each year of service, up to a maximum of 52 weeks. Management countered with a minimum of four weeks and a maximum of eight. This is in line with what they offered during our work-sharing negotiations last summer, when they were claiming serious financial stress, and much less than what they offered during the big round of layoffs BuzzFeed went through in 2019. 

As we reminded management, last summer members of their own bargaining committee told us “We would like to offer you a better severance,” and “I don’t think anyone feels like this is as rich as we want it to be.” Why management would then propose to contractually lock in severance they themselves have admitted is nowhere near good enough, only they can explain!

UNPAID LEAVES: This is the only proposal on a specific benefit or leave policy that the company responded to, but they still ignored and rejected the bulk of what we proposed. We want up to 1 year for unpaid leave, including academic, book/creative, and personal. Their response: a maximum of 3 months for all types of leave, with an option to request an extension to 6 months — which is actually more restrictive than our newsroom’s current published policy, which offers “6 months of unpaid leave in most cases.” In response, the company told us that that document — which they routinely cite at the bargaining table to defend their proposals — is out of date.

The company also wants their current policy that an employee must use all their PTO before going on any unpaid leave (including book leave) to remain the same, which is a concern for many people in the newsroom. There’s a big difference between taking a vacation and taking an unpaid leave to deal with personal issues or work on a book project, and conflating the two worsens the burnout that many of our members are already experiencing.

HEALTH & SAFETY - Finally, some standards the company and the union could agree on! The company agreed that employees don’t have to work in any specific location if traveling to/from or being there would put their health or safety at risk. Given the quickly shifting state of the pandemic, it’s more important than ever that each person can make the decisions they need to to ensure their own safety, and we’re glad to have the vast majority of this proposal finally settled. 

However, the company’s response to our proposal on how they can support employees’ mental health was disheartening. We proposed a $400 a month reimbursement for out of network mental health care, funded through a limited-purpose HRA, which the company immediately rejected. They did not propose any alternative plans. We were told that mental health benefits had to be considered in an “economic package,” and that “maybe there will be trade offs” in other ways we’re compensated. 

We will continue to push the company to do better in ensuring that employees have affordable access to mental health services, because this is not just an issue of money. Given the incredible mental stress of journalism work at such a chaotic moment in the world, it’s vital to ensuring a healthy and safe workplace.

So Close, Yet So Far

Late last month, we had our most important bargaining session yet. We presented our wages proposal — the final piece of our economic package — which we believe will fix some big problems in the current system and result in a stronger, more equitable newsroom. But we also received some troubling counters from management on some of the other issues we’re still bargaining over — especially in response to our proposals on increasing newsroom diversity through hiring.

Here’s the latest.

WAGES

BuzzFeed’s current pay structure — known as the leveling system — makes no sense. We gave a presentation that outlined the problems with the system, including the lack of transparency, massive pay gaps between desks, different pay depending on your location, and pay ceilings that make it hard to retain veteran employees.

During bargaining, several unit members testified about the challenges the system has presented for them. One member spoke about how tying pay to location is counterproductive to our newsroom’s goal of producing great journalism, another spoke about the irony of seeing his pay ceiling plummet after moving from the investigations to the inequality desk; others spoke about the troubling disparities between desks.

Our proposal would simplify the system from 112(!) possible pay bands to 7 minimum salary levels (starting at $75,000) to reduce confusion and disparity, eliminate location-based pay, and guarantee annual raises for everyone in our unit.

DERIVATIVE WORKS/IP RIGHTS

While the work we publish remains the intellectual property of BuzzFeed, we’ve proposed that the company must communicate clearly with employees about any production agreements they enter into regarding someone’s work, that the author of anything that gets adapted should receive credit in the final product, and that if a work is autobiographical (a personal essay, etc.) that the employee would retain the derivative rights.

We also proposed that the employee would receive 100% of any initial option payment and 50% of other compensation the company receives for a production deal based on their work (a huge improvement on the current policy, which is that employee are not entitled to any payment, and only receive small bonuses at the company’s discretion). We believe a clear system that incentivizes employees to help pitch and develop projects is in everyone’s best interests.  

For book deals, we’ve proposed that employees should be granted a license to write books based on their work for BuzzFeed News and that they own all rights to and retain all revenue from that book.

HIRING

For nearly a year and a half, we have been pushing BuzzFeed to turn its lip service about diversity into something tangible and actionable. One important step toward that goal: interviewing candidates from underrepresented groups for open positions.

We originally proposed that management commit to interviewing a set percentage of candidates from such backgrounds (i.e. at least 50% of people for all jobs annually). Management pushed back on a percentage, so we proposed a tiered system to ensure that a significant number of diverse candidates make it past the initial HR phone screening stage: at least 4 out of 9 candidates, 5 out of 11, 7 out of 15, and so on. 

They came back with…. 3.  3 people from traditionally underrepresented groups in the hiring manager screening interview stage, regardless of how big that pool is. (Company-provided data, while incomplete, suggests that the average size of such a pool is historically about 24.)

We are not proposing a hiring quota; what we are proposing is a long-term goal that will encourage the company to do better in recruiting and interviewing a wide range of candidates for every job. And yet our managers are unwilling to commit to even that. 

It’s extremely disappointing that while plenty of other media companies — like NBC, Time, Reuters, and Conde Nast — have agreed to 50% interview goals, BuzzFeed is digging in on such a misguided position, despite long promoting itself as a diverse organization. Especially now, when racial justice movements, from Black Lives Matter to #StopAsianHate, are dominating the news, it is in this newsroom’s best interest to ensure its staff can speak to the moment.

TRAINING AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT

We’ve proposed that annual reviews and performance evaluations *should not* be used for disciplinary purposes, and that employees should have clear opportunities every year to discuss their career path with a manager so that everyone understands what it takes to be promoted and how they can advance within the newsroom. 

Our committee clashed with management at the table over the question of traffic and performance at the bargaining table.We believe that while traffic data is an important tool to analyze the reach of specific stories and inform editorial strategy, managers should not use traffic as a metric to evaluate individual employee performance. Because, as we all know, traffic often does not accurately reflect the quality or impact of our work. A post that took 30 minutes to put together can go viral for reasons outside a reporter’s control, while an investigation that took six months to complete and changed laws when it was published may have a much smaller readership.  Even though one editorial manager confirmed during the session that traffic is not generally used as a performance metric, management suggested our proposal was outlandish.

OUTSIDE WORK

Management continued to stand firm in their belief that any outside work —  paid or unpaid, or even unrelated to your job — should be approved by our managers. At one point, a company lawyer said: “Your creative and journalistic focus has to be for us.” They seem fundamentally confused about the fact that many members of our newsrooms have personal creative projects unrelated to their jobs, and all of us have lives outside of work — and that’s not something any employer should have control over.

We understand — and have proposed that — approval would be necessary before writing a paid article for a competitive media outlet, or something else that BuzzFeed News could potentially publish, but it’s absurd that a personal blog would have to be approved by management. In the words of one unit member, “BuzzFeed seems to want ownership of everything that we do.”

Important Wins On Privacy And Safety

We’re back with another update from the bargaining table. Over our last three sessions in March and early April, we put forward several new economic proposals and made progress on some non-economic issues. Now, we’re gearing up to present our final proposals, including the cornerstone of any union contract: wages.

Here are the big takeaways:

HEALTH AND SAFETY: After *months* of fighting with management, BuzzFeed has finally backed off its unacceptable language about reporters being unable to refuse dangerous assignments. This is a major victory for our union!

We’re also continuing to push management on mental health coverage. The company’s last proposal, offering counseling only to address psychological stress suffered by “a large proportion of employees” in connection with exposure to “abnormally disturbing material” is much too narrow for us. We’ll also be discussing mental health care as part of our economic proposals, so more updates to come here.

REMOTE WORK: After a year of employees successfully working remotely, BuzzFeed is still fighting the union over our proposal that employee requests to work remotely won't be unreasonably denied unless the decision would "materially impact operations."

The company's desire to control where employees work — despite the fact that dozens of BuzzFeed News staffers still don’t know whether or not there will even be an office where they live, after the closure of offices in DC, San Francisco, and Canada last year — is confusing, if not outright hypocritical. Management has also proposed that employees who relocate to new cities might have future raises restricted. We believe that the work an employee does, not where they live, should determine their salary.

HOURS AND OVERTIME: We proposed a union-standard 35 hour workweek (7 hours + a one-hour break each a day) and that any time worked beyond that be logged as overtime or comp time. We are also recommending that the company significantly expand the number of employees who are overtime eligible.

Currently, the company awards comp time in half or full day increments, but we proposed tracking it by the hour, as well as the option to have comp time paid out once per year instead of taken as time off. We also proposed double pay or comp time if people work on holidays and a clear system for time spent “on call” that tracks with our newsroom’s current practice. 

PRIVACY: We’ve finally come to an agreement that BuzzFeed will not surveil, search, or track employee-owned devices, except with employee consent This is a big victory after management pushback during previous sessions!

We’re still working out some other aspects of this proposal,  including when it is acceptable for management to monitor non-work activities. We proposed that management must be able to show “documented reasonable suspicion that the employee has engaged in or is about to engage in gross misconduct” in order to monitor someone. The company has pushed back against that, proposing a much lower standard. We need to make sure that our members’ lives outside of work stay private, and we’ll keep working towards contract language that ensures it.   

SUCCESSORSHIP: The media landscape is in constant flux, to put it mildly. A union contract can’t necessarily prevent cuts after an acquisition, as we were saddened to see last month when BuzzFeed laid off far too many of our talented new colleagues at HuffPost, but it can help provide stability — and severance. If BuzzFeed happened to be sold to another company, we’d obviously want to retain all the contractual protections we’ve fought long and hard for. So more than a year ago we presented an extensive proposal on Successorship, including provisions that the union be notified in advance about any sale, and that BuzzFeed would make it a condition of any sale that our contract would stay in place. 

But management’s first response, shared with us just this month, is simply that they don’t want to do anything beyond what’s already required by the law, and won’t make any guarantees that a buyer would have to keep current employees on staff or honor our contract. Their argument: We shouldn’t be worried, since the company is currently in “acquisition mode.” While that may be true right now, this contract needs to support us for years to come, not just when times are good.

OUTSIDE WORK: In their most recent proposal, management argued that they must approve all outside work, paid or unpaid, including personal writing not on our beat. This could mean that employees would be disciplined for doing outside work that is in no way competitive with BuzzFeed. This is a huge overreach that would have a serious chilling effect on staffers’ creative projects outside of work.

Our own most recent proposal is very reasonable: We offered to give the company approval/veto power over freelance assignments that BuzzFeed News might publish, or work for a direct competitor of BuzzFeed News. And we’ve always agreed that anything that would interfere with someone’s work for BuzzFeed News or would create a journalistic conflict of interest is off-limits. But we believe that unpaid, personal or volunteer work should never need to be approved by management. 

BuzzFeed is fighting us on this, insisting on total control over every conceivable kind of content employees might want to create.News staffers are creative people who have lives and interests outside of work — which often benefits the company, as they develop their own audiences! Overly restrictive policies on this aren’t going to work in either side’s interests — and would make people more likely to quit their jobs to start a Substack, rather than less!

BENEFITS: We proposed locking in our health insurance plans and flexible spending accounts, as well as additional perks and memberships the company currently offers. We also want a revamp to our 401(k) matching, and proposed 100% matching up to 6%. This is a major increase from the measly matching that we currently have of only 25% of up to 3% contributed (for a maximum match of 0.75%) — which is lower than almost any other media company we’re aware of, and is something employees throughout the company have raised as a concern for years

Finally, we proposed a supplemental mental health care reimbursement, which would be structured as a tax-free HRA fund managed by the company, to help bridge the gap between insurance and reality (since a lot of therapists are out-of-network and many people spend thousands every year on deductibles and coinsurance for therapy). This would allow for unit employees to be reimbursed for out-of-pocket mental health care expenses for up to $400 per month. The stress of covering traumatic news events is an unavoidable occupational hazard in any newsroom, and we hope the company is as serious as we are about finding ways to address it and support employees’ mental health.

The One Where We Talked About Levels

We’re back with another bargaining update! Our two sessions in February focused largely on economic issues and discussing the abstruse “leveling” system the company uses to determine employee compensation.

In the past, HR has often pointed to one set of company-wide numeric levels (corresponding to specific roles/titles) as the be-all end-all for determining employee pay. But our conversation revealed that individual pay is actually based on the interaction of three different factors, two of which employees aren’t ever told about, and pay for two roles within the same “level” could be wildly different if the employees are on different teams or in different geographic locations. Though management argued they have been transparent about this system, no employee, to our knowledge, has ever been told about or shown the mysterious “back end” pay band grid. So, at the end of the day, the elaborate system really functions to let the company continue to pay each employee whatever they want to.

We’re hard at work on proposals for a clear, transparent, and fair pay structure for our members that will address inequities between teams and individuals, and actually make sense to employees.

Here are some other updates from the bargaining table.

HARASSMENT INVESTIGATIONS: We got the company to agree that employees who make a complaint about harassment or discrimination will be informed once an investigation is over and what action was taken as a result. This is a rare provision to secure in a contract, and we’re very proud to have to come to an agreement on it. Management also agreed that employees called on to participate in investigations as witnesses will have the right to request that a Guild representative be present during investigatory interviews.

REMOTE WORK: The company is still seeking to maintain almost total control over this issue; they’ve rejected our proposal that requests to work remotely, as long as it wouldn’t negatively impact operations, should not be unreasonably denied. 

We’re also still negotiating over criteria for when the company should pay for a remote worker’s travel expenses, where we’ve repeatedly reassured management that we’re not trying to nickel and dime them for subway fare, which seems to be a major concern for them.

OUTSIDE WORK: We proposed a process for how staffers would get approval to do freelance work elsewhere, in the event that it might relate to or compete with someone’s work for BuzzFeed News. We proposed giving the company the right of first refusal, and a right to turn down requests that might present a conflict of interest.

But management rejected this outright. Under their proposal, all outside work — including personal and unpaid work — would be subject to manager’s approval. That includes starting a blog or writing something in an alumni newsletter, even if we weren’t getting paid for it and it had nothing to do with what we covered for BuzzFeed News.

This is antithetical to the spirit of our newsroom. We’re creative people who love to try new things and experiment on social media and other platforms. Instituting a policy like this would stifle what makes this newsroom special, and could drive away talented people with devoted readers — ironic, considering how much the company benefits from our personal brands and followings.

PAID LEAVE: In addition to proposing a total of 24 weeks of paid parental leave — up from the current 18 weeks BuzzFeed offers — we proposed an additional 20 days of what we’re calling “transition time” for the first year of parenthood. We are also recommending getting rid of the (sexist!) “primary” and “secondary” caregiver distinction. Although the company won’t outright say that “secondary” caregiver leave is for men, it appears this policy was designed with straight, cisgender couples in mind. We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to take the full leave and will push to get rid of this retrograde two-tiered system.

We’ve also proposed doing away with the tiered system for bereavement, which currently allows staff to take a range of 1 to 5 days off, based on the “closeness” of the family member who died. Instead, we’ve presented a policy whereby employees can take up to 10 days leave when they lose a loved one — regardless of relationship — and expanded the list of people whose death grants time off to include close friends as well. 

Our paid leave proposal also includes a one-time paid leave of up to three months (aka sabbatical) for employees who’ve worked at BuzzFeed for four years, and memorializes the current company policies on marriage leave and jury duty.

TIME OFF: We’ve proposed significantly higher caps on vacation accrual balances, making the point that especially in our line of work, where the news never stops, we often can’t use our time off. Currently, the company has the two tiers of PTO accrual based on years of service (15 days when you start, and 20 days after 3 years). We’ve put forward a third tier of 25 days per year for employees with six or more years of service, which is in line with most comparable media companies and would help encourage retention of long-time employees.

We have also memorialized the (very good!) new policy that PTO and comp time will be paid out when an employee leaves the company, as well unlimited sick time and the monthly Self Care Day introduced during the pandemic.

Finally, since lots of BuzzFeed News employees celebrate holidays that aren’t on the company’s list of observed holidays, we’ve offered that employees can request to substitute any company named holiday for a different religious holiday AND proposed increasing the number of floating holidays from one to five to be used at any time.

Three Things We Won For Our Contract, And Three Things We’re Still Fighting For

A new year brings possibility and hope. For our union, the turn of the calendar marks one year since we began bargaining with BuzzFeed for a new contract, and a determination to get this done in 2021.

During our first two bargaining sessions this month, we secured a few strong tentative agreements, but we’re still fighting on some really important issues. Here are the big things you need to know:

What we’re celebrating:

NO MORE NDAS: The company has finally agreed that they will never solicit or pay employees to sign non-disclosure agreements related to harassment or discrimination claims, not only for union employees, but for ALL of BuzzFeed. This proposal helps set an industry standard, and aligns our company policy with our mission, as reporters, to uncover the truth.

EDITORIAL INTEGRITY: This was a big win for and by our union members, who gave passionate testimony at the bargaining table about why these protections are so important. We’ve reached a tentative agreement securing the right for all union employees to revoke their byline, to turn down assignments that would involve advertiser input, and to be informed whether any story they’re working on is part of a sponsorship. We’ve also formally banned the practice of catch-and-kill at BuzzFeed News. Most importantly, our contract will make it clear that editorial decisions will be made by editorial leadership, and no one else.

PTO PAYOUT: The company recently announced that vacation and comp days will be paid out to all employees when they leave the company, and we confirmed that this new change will also apply to union members. This is something our members have been fighting for since before we were at the bargaining table, and we’re so glad that the company finally, as they put it,  “heard the feedback that [they] received over the years.” We hope they bring that same energy to the bargaining table!

What we’re fighting for:

A REASONABLE REMOTE WORK POLICY: Management made a very restrictive proposal for remote work, which would require employees to submit 24-hour advance notice any time they want to work from home, and get management approval if they want to work from home more than one day a week. They also want to be able to reduce an employee’s salary if they relocate or transition to remote work.

The company’s approach is both cynical and burdensome to employees. BuzzFeed’s flexible pre-pandemic WFH practice worked well for both the company and its employees, and we want to enshrine that in our contract. Management’s resistance is particularly frustrating given that we are ALL currently — and successfully — working from home. We’ll keep pushing for a policy that actually reflects our work culture.

DIVERSE HIRING: We want to ensure that as our newsroom grows, it draws on a pipeline of people from a diversity of backgrounds. To that end, we’ve proposed that, for jobs open to external candidates, at least 50% of people who make it beyond the initial interview stage should be from underrepresented groups.

Several other media outlets have already committed to similar 50% goals. But management has instead countered with a requirement of three people — no percentage, just three, period. That might be acceptable if a hiring pool is five people, but what if there are 50? That won’t accomplish the goal that management claims to share, which is to have a staff that’s representative of the people that we report on and report to.

DIGITAL PRIVACY: Management’s latest counter to our proposal on employee privacy asks for a level of access not just to members’ work computers but also their personal electronic devices and accounts that we believe would seriously jeopardize both our personal and professional privacy.

In December, we gave management our latest counter on the issue, reiterating our proposal that the company should not monitor unit members' non-work activities and, should inform the employee if they are geographically tracking us on company-owned devices for any reason, and absolutely should not — for the good of everyone involved — have the right to search employee’s personal devices or accounts.

As of our last session, we’ve also put our first economic proposals on the table, including severance, education & loan assistance, and unpaid leave. More updates to come here!

Thank you everyone for your solidarity and support!
The BuzzFeed News Union