Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Zinking Happen Here a podcast telling you to rage
Speaker 2: against the dying of the light. I am your host,
Speaker 2: Bia long and many episodes ago, significantly more tearfully, I
Speaker 2: talked about how, you know, watching the trans voices in
Speaker 2: media get fired and disappear felt like watching the stars
Speaker 2: disappear in the sky. And today I am here to say,
Speaker 2: do you not go gently into that good night?
Speaker 3: Fuck him?
Speaker 2: Rage against the dying of the lights, and with me
Speaker 2: to rage against the dying of the light and talk
Speaker 2: about some absolute bullshit. Is Alma a Vie who is
Speaker 2: a former staffer at Bonappetite, and we will be getting
Speaker 2: into why that's now technically former and the VP of
Speaker 2: the New S Guild of New York.
Speaker 3: Alma, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Amy, lovely to be here.
Speaker 3: I wish it was under better circumstances.
Speaker 2: I feel like everyone I talked to I go, I
Speaker 2: wish you were under me circumstances.
Speaker 5: But you know, yeah, circumstances across the border kind of
Speaker 5: trash right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're really bad. The circumstances they do be
Speaker 3: they do, they do be shit.
Speaker 2: So these specifically bad circumstances are one conte Nast has
Speaker 2: just obliterated teen Vogue, which had been one of the
Speaker 2: few actually very good progressive outlets, also one of the
Speaker 2: few outlets that would publish trans people regularly, and it's
Speaker 2: just gone now. And Alma and three of her coullies
Speaker 2: were fired for very productive union activity, being like, hey, what.
Speaker 3: The fuck in we kinder terms of that. I can
Speaker 3: say this because it's not my ass of the line,
Speaker 3: but yeah, do you want to talk a bit about
Speaker 3: what happened?
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally. I mean to give the company it's caveat. Technically,
Speaker 5: teen Vogue still exists. It has just been moved under
Speaker 5: the broader organization of Vogue. They've now said that it's
Speaker 5: coverage areas will include professional development as well as well.
Speaker 5: There are a couple of other things that they highlighted,
Speaker 5: but certainly the things that they did not highlight include, say,
Speaker 5: you know, scathing coverage of the Trump administration, or coverage
Speaker 5: of trans youth and trans healthcare bands for teenagers, coverage
Speaker 5: of like young celebrities of color, and so on. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 5: I guess to just go back to the start of
Speaker 5: the timeline. Last Monday, we at the News Guild and
Speaker 5: you know, at the Conde Nast Union, which is the
Speaker 5: union that represents basically every worker or every journalist and
Speaker 5: video maker at Conde Nast except for those in the
Speaker 5: New Yorker, they are in like a separate bargaining unit
Speaker 5: that we see as like you know, linked sibling units
Speaker 5: or at the linked sibling unions. We do most of
Speaker 5: our organizing together, and our contracts are nearly identical. But
Speaker 5: anyway we yeah, I know, right, union siblings. It's adorable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we try to stay close.
Speaker 5: But anyway, we got word last Monday that about two
Speaker 5: thirds of the staff of teen Vogue were being laid off,
Speaker 5: including a friend of mine and I think former guests
Speaker 5: on your show, actually Lex mcmahamon, who was the politics
Speaker 5: editor at teen Vogue, as well as a few of
Speaker 5: the culture editors based like if they were covering I
Speaker 5: mean being a little glib here, but like if they
Speaker 5: were covering say like trans writes, trans youth, like progressive
Speaker 5: culture and nearly any way shape or form. Yep, they
Speaker 5: were either laid off or the remaining workers were folded
Speaker 5: into the larger organization of Vogue. And I think they're
Speaker 5: still figuring out exactly where they fit into that organization
Speaker 5: and what like youth coverage looks like going forward. So
Speaker 5: that happened last Monday, which was obviously a massive loss.
Speaker 5: I sat in on a lot of the like the
Speaker 5: wine Garten meetings, going over the exit packages for those employees,
Speaker 5: a lot of like really sad and cheerful meetings that day.
Speaker 2: We should point out this is being recorded on Monday,
Speaker 2: the tenth. Last Monday's is Monday, November third. Not sure
Speaker 2: when this is going to come out, but yet just
Speaker 2: to make the time link clear here, Yes, absolutely November third.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was Monday, November third. Yeah, thank you for
Speaker 5: the correction. And then two days later at the company,
Speaker 5: we got a notification that there was another round of layoffs,
Speaker 5: this one hitting I believe folks on the video teams
Speaker 5: and then people on the like copy in fact checking
Speaker 5: section of the com company as well.
Speaker 4: This was super disruptive.
Speaker 5: Usually, you know, at a company like Conde Nast, well,
Speaker 5: the union doesn't have like explicit protections for this, and
Speaker 5: in fact, like the company has the right to perform
Speaker 5: layoffs if they need to for business reasons. Usually when
Speaker 5: a round of layoffs goes through, there's like a period
Speaker 5: of peace that comes after that, you know, like there
Speaker 5: will be you know, a reduction in force. We'll figure out, Okay,
Speaker 5: how are we going to keep doing our jobs now
Speaker 5: that we have fewer staffers, and then if the company
Speaker 5: needs to reduce the staff again, that will happen like
Speaker 5: a few months, maybe a year in the future.
Speaker 4: Two rounds of layoffs in the same.
Speaker 5: Week had people really really scared and really stressed out, because,
Speaker 5: I mean, for one, there's like just the sense of, like,
Speaker 5: oh God, a lot of my coworkers are gone, how
Speaker 5: am I going to be able to keep doing my job?
Speaker 5: We lost at my magazine, bon Apetite. We lost our
Speaker 5: social media director, the person who was basically running our
Speaker 5: social accounts. We'd gotten notification from the company that editors
Speaker 5: were going to be doing their own posting from then on,
Speaker 5: which is just not not how things I've ever worked before,
Speaker 5: not really a thing that they're like, you know, my
Speaker 5: colleagues are brilliant, and many of them are brilliant like
Speaker 5: users of social media, but like not really a part
Speaker 5: of our jobs historically. So we're all pretty confused how
Speaker 5: we were supposed to, you know, actually keep running our magazine.
Speaker 5: Most of our magazines are already running on pretty reduced
Speaker 5: staffs in the first place.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So anyway between that and the kind of obvious
Speaker 5: political connection that one could draw, or at least like that,
Speaker 5: a lot of our members were afraid of, you know,
Speaker 5: teen Vogue being this like pretty famously radical or at
Speaker 5: the very least like pretty famously progressive publication doing some
Speaker 5: like really really hard hitting journalism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a really clear.
Speaker 5: Line you can draw between like all of the Colbert
Speaker 5: and Jimmy Kibble, but also like the CBS stuff with
Speaker 5: Barry Weiss, like this kind of broader right wing shift
Speaker 5: in media. You can draw I think a direct line
Speaker 5: between all of that and like the shuttering or near
Speaker 5: shuttering of teen Vogue. So we did a thing that
Speaker 5: we basically always do when we're facing an issue like this,
Speaker 5: whether it's a big reduction in force or just some
Speaker 5: decision from the upper levels of the management that have
Speaker 5: all of the workers being like, wait, what the fuck
Speaker 5: did you just do? We had a rally in the
Speaker 5: cafeteria to go over some of the questions that we
Speaker 5: all have for management. We created a list of questions
Speaker 5: that we wanted to ask and then and I cannot
Speaker 5: stress how like routine this is for us as a union.
Speaker 5: We went from the cafeteria, which is on the thirty
Speaker 5: fifth floor of the World Trade Center, down to the
Speaker 5: executive floor, which is directly below it on the thirty
Speaker 5: fourth floor of the World Trade Center, and we walked
Speaker 5: over to the executive offices and said, we have some
Speaker 5: questions for Stan Duncan, who is the head of the
Speaker 5: people team at CONDE, and asked basically one of the
Speaker 5: people in charge of either making these decisions of you know,
Speaker 5: staffing in reduction, and then of enforcing those decisions as well.
Speaker 5: We went down to speak with Stan Duncan ask him
Speaker 5: some of our questions. Two other HR employees came out
Speaker 5: in medicine the hallway. We said we'd like to speak
Speaker 5: to Stan. We were happy to ask them our questions,
Speaker 5: but they said they wouldn't be particularly good at answering them,
Speaker 5: or they might not have good answers for us. But Stan,
Speaker 5: they said, was in a meeting at the time. It
Speaker 5: just so happened that either Stan's meeting ended right then,
Speaker 5: or maybe he heard people talking in the hallway and
Speaker 5: decided to come check it out, or maybe there wasn't
Speaker 5: a meeting, but For whatever reason, Stan happened to come
Speaker 5: out into the hallway at that time, and so we
Speaker 5: started trying to ask him our questions. Some of those
Speaker 5: questions included, like, was the closing of teen Vogue inherently political?
Speaker 5: But also how are we going to be able to
Speaker 5: do our jobs going forward? How are we supposed to
Speaker 5: keep running these magazines if you're going to keep cutting
Speaker 5: our jobs? And then also how are we supposed to
Speaker 5: keep doing our jobs if we are constantly living in
Speaker 5: fear of losing them? You know, Stan does not answer
Speaker 5: any of these questions. Of course, yeah, no, naturally, he
Speaker 5: tells us we're not allowed to congregate in the hallway.
Speaker 5: This is not true, of course, we what well, yeah,
Speaker 5: we I mean, one, this is our workplace. We I
Speaker 5: think are allowed to have conversations in the hallway of
Speaker 5: our workplace too. I mean, if he was saying that
Speaker 5: we weren't allowed to, say, take part in union activities
Speaker 5: in the workplace, we have a right under Section seven
Speaker 5: of the NLRA that says we can do that. We
Speaker 5: also have like contract provisions that say the company will
Speaker 5: not infringe upon our right to organize and demonstrate in
Speaker 5: the workplace. So that just wasn't true, and in fact,
Speaker 5: the union before everything else happened, already filed a grievance
Speaker 5: about denying our Section seven rights to organize in the workplace.
Speaker 5: God yeah, So anyway, stand tries to get us to
Speaker 5: go back to our desks. He walks across the floor,
Speaker 5: tells us to follow him. We follow him and keep
Speaker 5: asking questions. He says that we have to go back
Speaker 5: and do our jobs. We say, we will happily do
Speaker 5: our jobs if you could just answer our questions. He
Speaker 5: tells us that we have to go back to our workplaces.
Speaker 5: We remind him this is our workplace, and anyway, we
Speaker 5: end up asking him those questions. We follow him back
Speaker 5: and forth along the hallway. He goes back into his office,
Speaker 5: closes the door. We all go back to our desks
Speaker 5: for the rest of the day. I finish up my
Speaker 5: work and I go home, and then I get notification
Speaker 5: from the News Guild at seven that the company has
Speaker 5: no tofied them that they are terminating me and three
Speaker 5: of my colleagues.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 5: No severance, no ongoing insurance coverage. My insurance expires at
Speaker 5: the end of the month, no notice, no investigation, effective immediately.
Speaker 5: So as of last Wednesday, I am no longer an
Speaker 5: employee of Conde Nast. I'd been working there for five years.
Speaker 5: I helped start the Conde Nast union. In the time
Speaker 5: since I joined there, I was one of the most
Speaker 5: tenured members of my magazine. Actually, people don't generally stick
Speaker 5: around there for a long time, but at twenty seven
Speaker 5: years old, I was a long hauler MIA and Yeah.
Speaker 5: In the time since then, our union has filed a
Speaker 5: second grievance. There was the first one over telling us
Speaker 5: we couldn't congregate. There's now a second one over the
Speaker 5: retaliatory firings of me and my three colleagues. The company
Speaker 5: has since put five other people I believe on an
Speaker 5: unpaid leave in an attempt to discipline more people who
Speaker 5: took part in the demonstration. Kind Of hard to see
Speaker 5: rhyme or reason in the people that they decided to discipline.
Speaker 5: So I was speaking quite a bit during the demonstration,
Speaker 5: as was one of the other people who was terminated.
Speaker 5: One person asked one question that was a Jake la
Speaker 5: Hood at Wired. He asked a question towards the beginning,
Speaker 5: which was, what is your definition of congregate? When they
Speaker 5: told us we can't congregate in the whole way, which
Speaker 5: I think is a perfectly valid question. And then one
Speaker 5: person who was terminated actually as far as I know,
Speaker 5: didn't speak at all during the demonstration. He was, however,
Speaker 5: the vice president of the New Yorker Union or the
Speaker 5: vice chair of the New Yorker Union, and an organizer
Speaker 5: that the company was like very well aware of. And
Speaker 5: then as for the people who were placed on disciplinary leaves,
Speaker 5: I mean, I believe some of them actually spoke significantly
Speaker 5: more than some of the people who were terminated during
Speaker 5: the demonstration, but were certainly, like historically at the very least,
Speaker 5: less visible and less vocal union organizers. So the trend
Speaker 5: that we're seeing is that the people who spoke up
Speaker 5: were either people who had been historically very active in
Speaker 5: the union or in Jake's case, somebody who is doing
Speaker 5: really really impressive coverage of the Trump administration and like
Speaker 5: a really really hard hitting journalism against like Doge and
Speaker 5: like the general efforts of the right right now to
Speaker 5: you know, I mean, listeners of this podcast know everything
Speaker 5: that's going on there.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say this, and I'm going to adopt the
Speaker 2: preferred language of these professionals, which is to say that,
Speaker 2: and this is the preferred language of management, is that
Speaker 2: some people are calling this both a return of resegregation
Speaker 2: and an obvious anti union political purge because it is
Speaker 2: a bunch of trans people and a bunch of fam
Speaker 2: white people who have been eliminated from teen Vogue. You know,
Speaker 2: this is something that you were talking about earlier, about
Speaker 2: drawing the connection between this and CBS. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: what did Barry Wise do when she got into CBS?
Speaker 2: She fired like every norm white person who worked there, right,
Speaker 2: because their overt political plan is resegregation. And you know,
Speaker 2: in order to do resegregation, you fire all of the
Speaker 2: people who are non white, you get rid of any
Speaker 2: trans people, and you get woman.
Speaker 3: Admittedly it at.
Speaker 2: CBS, it is not like they had like a giant
Speaker 2: like like, you know, it wasn't like like I had
Speaker 2: of trans politics in the first place. I mean they
Speaker 2: had some like you know, there's people there who are
Speaker 2: like cool, but like it wasn't like you know, it's
Speaker 2: it wasn't like teen Vogue, which genuinely had way more
Speaker 2: transcoverage than like any other outlet.
Speaker 4: No, totally, Like I can.
Speaker 2: I emphasize enough like the extent to which this is
Speaker 2: the most normal union activity in the entire world, into
Speaker 2: which this is the most protected.
Speaker 3: Category in the entire world.
Speaker 2: And you know, obviously a bunch of the bosses and
Speaker 2: a bunch of like the corporations that are doing this
Speaker 2: shit like don't think the NLRA should exist, and like
Speaker 2: is like a legally valid thing, but it's still enforced
Speaker 2: right now and so well mostly but like like for this, yeah,
Speaker 2: still in force.
Speaker 3: So they did unbelievably hideously illegal.
Speaker 2: Retaliatory firings that are illegal in like so many different ways.
Speaker 2: It's baffling, Like it's like you need like a second
Speaker 2: laund degree to fight every single ball they just broke totally.
Speaker 5: I mean, the thing that I would point out too
Speaker 5: is like, like you said, this is an extremely common
Speaker 5: type of union action, like across the entire labor moved everyone.
Speaker 5: Everyone marches on the boss. We also specifically like as
Speaker 5: a union, we've marched on the boss like tons of
Speaker 5: different times. We've marched on stand multiple times in the past.
Speaker 5: There was one demonstration where we all marched on stand
Speaker 5: during contract bargaining actually last year where we had significantly
Speaker 5: more people and I will say being much more confrontational.
Speaker 5: I remember like a large crowd booing him in front
Speaker 5: of the entire executive floor, and I would say, and
Speaker 5: I would say, like two to three times as many
Speaker 5: people present watching in a much more like loud and
Speaker 5: activated and energetic forum. But we've had marches on other executives,
Speaker 5: We've had marches on editors in chief in the past.
Speaker 5: And I mean one of the reasons that, like, when
Speaker 5: I got the news that I was being terminated, I
Speaker 5: like basically went into shock, felt extremely tame compared to
Speaker 5: past union actions that we've done. Yeah, and also, no
Speaker 5: one has ever been disciplined for par taking part in
Speaker 5: any action like this in the past, like let alone terminated,
Speaker 5: Like as far as I know, no one's ever been
Speaker 5: called into a meeting and said like, you shouldn't have
Speaker 5: done that, and we're keeping an eye on you. So
Speaker 5: this is like a massive escalation on the company side
Speaker 5: in terms of retaliation. And I mean that's also what
Speaker 5: we've heard kind of across the board at the News Guild.
Speaker 5: You know, I've been in close conversations with our president
Speaker 5: and with other like organizers at the Guild who have
Speaker 5: said and this is you know, our local union that
Speaker 5: organizes a bunch of different publications in New York City
Speaker 5: and kind of in the surrounding area. This is one
Speaker 5: of the most egregious examples of retaliation that just about
Speaker 5: anybody I've talked to you has seen in our union's history.
Speaker 5: And there's like pretty I think valid concern that like
Speaker 5: if a company like Conde and Asked is able to get
Speaker 5: away with this, like other companies within our union are
Speaker 5: going to follow suit and like take this as their queue,
Speaker 5: which is both scary but also has been energizing for
Speaker 5: a lot of people. We've seen, like a lot of
Speaker 5: folks really excited to like show up and join our
Speaker 5: fight and get involved in any way that they can.
Speaker 3: Hell.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The other thing that I would point out, based on
Speaker 5: what you were saying is so Kanye Nest has a
Speaker 5: queer publication them dot Us, which I think is one
Speaker 5: of the all time URLs for a queer publication. You
Speaker 5: possibly have very funny So between them and teen Vogue,
Speaker 5: you had a lot of the company's like trans staffers.
Speaker 5: They kind of function as like sister publications. They like
Speaker 5: sit next to each other, they work closely together outside
Speaker 5: of them. As far as I know, I was the
Speaker 5: only trans woman implied on editorial like Kanye Nest and
Speaker 5: I am certainly the only trans woman in our union,
Speaker 5: including at them, actually them, All of the transoman employees there,
Speaker 5: to my understanding, are not part of the unit. They
Speaker 5: are in management positions, which, yeah, your representation, but also
Speaker 5: means that like I was obviously in this like very
Speaker 5: lonely position, but also this very like visible and like
Speaker 5: clearly very vulnerable position where it's like incredibly easy to
Speaker 5: single somebody like me out. I would also say, during
Speaker 5: our contract fight, we had a lot of back and
Speaker 5: forth between like me and company management about their coverage
Speaker 5: under the healthcare plan. Namely, they excluded facial feminization surgery,
Speaker 5: which meant that, like, if you were an employee of
Speaker 5: Conde Nast and you wanted facial feminization surgery, you were
Speaker 5: either out of luck or had to find a way
Speaker 5: to raise about fifty thousand dollars based on a lot
Speaker 5: of estimates that I've seen.
Speaker 3: If you're really lucky and good and you're going to
Speaker 3: go to Thailand, you can maybe get it for thirty k.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, no exactly, which immediately the timeline stuff is cool, but.
Speaker 4: Totally I mean it's like all the opportunity.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of lucking Bundy, like it totally so
Speaker 3: much shit.
Speaker 5: It sucks so badly, even more if you want to
Speaker 5: recover in your own home and your own Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 5: and we weren't able to resolve that in the contract.
Speaker 5: I got FFS this year, and to do it, I
Speaker 5: had to go on like a New York State marketplace plan.
Speaker 5: Oh no, Jesus Christ, I had both plans active at
Speaker 5: the same time. But I have to get like secondary
Speaker 5: insurance that just seven hundred dollars a month in order
Speaker 5: to get out the best covered god. Yeah, and that
Speaker 5: still ended up being significantly cheaper. Yep, yeah, I mean
Speaker 5: and frankly, like Conde Nasked never covered it. Who did
Speaker 5: cover it was like lots of my union colleagues who
Speaker 5: jumped in and like created to go fundme for me
Speaker 5: and like helped to raise like all of the money
Speaker 5: that I needed to get surgery. And very very thankful
Speaker 5: for that. But anyway, point being like, the company does
Speaker 5: not exactly have the best track record when it comes
Speaker 5: to and like I feel very qualified to say this
Speaker 5: as like the trans woman in the Conde Nast union,
Speaker 5: the company does not exactly have the best track record
Speaker 5: in terms of like how they have treated us and
Speaker 5: me specifically around trans issues. So being like again kind
Speaker 5: of singled out in this way and then being hit
Speaker 5: with like this significant a piece of retaliation, it just
Speaker 5: feels really telling and also I mean really disappointing. Frankly,
Speaker 5: like I've I've been at Conde for or I.
Speaker 4: Keep using the present tense.
Speaker 5: I'd been at Conde for five years, and you know,
Speaker 5: I liked my job.
Speaker 4: I was good at my job.
Speaker 5: I hope that they will reverse course and turn this around,
Speaker 5: but anyway, it's disappointing. It's disappointing that like that that
Speaker 5: doesn't really seem to mean anything when the rapper hits
Speaker 5: their own.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think there's two ways you can look at it.
Speaker 2: One is it's like, oh, yeah, of course, of course
Speaker 2: the one trans woman in this bargaining. Yet it was
Speaker 2: like the VP of the union because like, yeah, transferms
Speaker 2: do be organizing, do we do do this?
Speaker 4: And that the truth.
Speaker 2: But then the second thing, and you were talking about this,
Speaker 2: like yeah, the magazines are already understaffed and they're just
Speaker 2: destroying them, you know, And this is the thing that
Speaker 2: I can say which is like, this is something we
Speaker 2: saw from Jeff Bezos, right when when Jeff Bezos sort
Speaker 2: of like took control of the Washington Post and then
Speaker 2: gradually sort of purged their staff, and like, you know,
Speaker 2: has this whole thing now about how, oh we're supposed
Speaker 2: to be pro free market and pro individual liberties, which
Speaker 2: does not include trans writes. You know, if you look
Speaker 2: at what happened to the Washington Post's subscriber account, it's
Speaker 2: like nothing, It's like the paper is dying. It's effectively
Speaker 2: just like it's not like an actual functional, like profit
Speaker 2: making thing anymore. Like it's it's just the sort of
Speaker 2: propaganda vanity outlet of a billionaire. And that's you know,
Speaker 2: that's probably what's going to happen to CBS, is that
Speaker 2: it's going to just get sort of annihilate, stripped down,
Speaker 2: because these people don't want a functioning media. They don't
Speaker 2: give a shit if these things actually work, because what
Speaker 2: what they're trying to do right now is accumulate raw,
Speaker 2: accumulate just raw power and attempt to do raw sort
Speaker 2: of narrative and media control in order to stay in power.
Speaker 2: And it's not working because everyone still hates them, even
Speaker 2: though they bought all the newspapers. Everyone is like, these
Speaker 2: people suck, like but this is that we run into
Speaker 2: with union stuff all the time, which is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of bosses who would rather their
Speaker 2: own company be nonfunctional, you know, their workers have any
Speaker 2: voice in it. And especially now in this political moment
Speaker 2: in which oh, hey, look the fascists are trying to
Speaker 2: seize control of the media, that becomes increasingly more and
Speaker 2: more an option of just fuck it, will just like
Speaker 2: get handouts from like the tech fascists forever, and in
Speaker 2: exchange for that, will publish whatever propaganda garbage they want
Speaker 2: to spit out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I would also say, like, I'm not
Speaker 5: sure get about across the entire company. Although I believe
Speaker 5: it was one of the better traffic stories that Conde
Speaker 5: Nast all year, but one of the most certainly one
Speaker 5: of the most like trafficked teen Vogue stories in this
Speaker 5: past year, was like out of their politics section. It
Speaker 5: was the Vivian Wilson Elon Musk's Transdoughter cover story, really
Speaker 5: really good, an amazing piece of journalism and also a
Speaker 5: piece like super viral, and I'm sure made a ton
Speaker 5: of money for the company. Yeah, and so one would think,
Speaker 5: you know, looking at like the trends of the past,
Speaker 5: that if that was going to inform anything, like the
Speaker 5: company would actually say, like more politics coverage, like more
Speaker 5: progressive coverage out of teen Vogue, and like.
Speaker 2: I remember, I don't have the exact numbers on me
Speaker 2: because I'm a hack and of fraud. But if it
Speaker 2: wasn't a hack and a fraud, I would have the
Speaker 2: exact numbers from the coverage of like the increase in
Speaker 2: both revenue generation and in like readership that teen Vogue
Speaker 2: underwent once they started doing politic stuff onto the first
Speaker 2: show administration. And now you're getting rid of that for
Speaker 2: what are clearly business reasons and are clearly, very very
Speaker 2: clearly not related to the fact that there is a
Speaker 2: bunch of a bunch of political pressure from a bunch
Speaker 2: of fascists to run the government.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't have like perfect insight
Speaker 5: into what's going on behind closed doors at Conde Nast,
Speaker 5: but I can't say that. We had a diversity committee
Speaker 5: meeting with our joint union management diversity committee a week
Speaker 5: before all of this went down, and they told us
Speaker 5: that they were you know, paraphrasing here, but management said
Speaker 5: that they are actively trying to avoid the attention and
Speaker 5: the eyre of the Trump administration, which at the time
Speaker 5: definitely raised some eyebrows and I think led to the
Speaker 5: big response last week of like.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmm, oh.
Speaker 5: By actively avoid the attention of the Trump administration, you
Speaker 5: meant just like get rid of the parts of the
Speaker 5: company that are like, yeah, hostile towards it, and I
Speaker 5: mean kind of too, like the good business of progressive coverage.
Speaker 5: I've covered a lot of beats in my time of
Speaker 5: bon Epetite, but there was a period where I was
Speaker 5: covering like the Starbucks Workers United fight pretty closely, a
Speaker 5: lot of articles about that in my back pocket.
Speaker 4: Those generally did really well.
Speaker 5: Actually, one of the first times I faced like big
Speaker 5: right wing backlash online was covering the like Dylan mulvaney
Speaker 5: bud light protests, which I used as an opportunity to
Speaker 5: write about the like the cores light boycotts of like
Speaker 5: the West Coast queer worker movement and like kind of
Speaker 5: the birth of the like gay labor movement. One of
Speaker 5: my best trafficks of all time stories I wrote about
Speaker 5: the like why the watermelon symbol became like such a
Speaker 5: big kind of like rally and cry and like Palestine
Speaker 5: and organizing over the past few years. Again massive traffic
Speaker 5: winner for the company. But every time, you know, we
Speaker 5: get into these meetings with management or every time we
Speaker 5: like hear about the direction that the company is shifting
Speaker 5: or the coverage is shifting, it always seems away from
Speaker 5: those kind of hot button issues that like there's clearly
Speaker 5: an appetite for stories about and instead towards well whatever
Speaker 5: it's towards, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, and you can look at this
Speaker 2: like there's been a whole bunch of there was a
Speaker 2: story recently about doctor Oz like pivoting his whole thing
Speaker 2: into doing like a right wing like media grift, and
Speaker 2: nobody's watching it. Like the average episode of it could
Speaker 2: happened here absolutely annihilates like just like like orders of
Speaker 2: magnitude better than like no, I think it was doctor
Speaker 2: phil Yeah it was doctor Phil.
Speaker 3: Who does that?
Speaker 2: Look they're like the same guy, Like, wow, that's not
Speaker 2: that that's slightly unfair to doctor os. Well, yeah, doctor
Speaker 2: Philip did this, like did the right wing pivot, And
Speaker 2: like nobody's listening to the show. It's like, no one
Speaker 2: this is like one of the most famous people in
Speaker 2: the United States getting annihilated by like Mia and the
Speaker 2: trendy crew, like.
Speaker 3: It could happen here, like.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, you know, and yeah, like there is this
Speaker 2: like massive demand for this stuff as like people increasing
Speaker 2: me realize that, oh yeah, wait, hold on, we're getting
Speaker 2: every single person like in the country is like almost
Speaker 2: individually getting screwed over by the Trump administration. He's like
Speaker 2: individually micro targeting every single part of his base and
Speaker 2: pissing them off. Like there was a whole farmer soy thing, right,
Speaker 2: and like he's like, I guess tend this negotiates we
Speaker 2: being sales now. But like, you know, you can look
Speaker 2: at like so he was fighting this whole war with
Speaker 2: his entire farming base and then he immediately turned around
Speaker 2: from there and went to fight the cattle ranchers. It's
Speaker 2: like there's so much appetite for any critique of this
Speaker 2: because it's so obviously just like malignant and narcissistically violent,
Speaker 2: and all of these companies that are like you know,
Speaker 2: like like this has always been the problem with the
Speaker 2: free presses that like the US does don't have a
Speaker 2: free press. The US is a capitalist press, and so
Speaker 2: you know, you can just buy them or apply enough
Speaker 2: political pressure and they will fall in line.
Speaker 3: And that's like what they're doing here.
Speaker 4: So what you're saying is we need a left wing
Speaker 4: Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna become the joker.
Speaker 4: Now, of course.
Speaker 5: I mean I'll also say, like I became an organizer
Speaker 5: in the News Guild for a lot of reasons, right,
Speaker 5: Like Bonapatia was my first job out of college, and
Speaker 5: I was really involved covering the dining workers organizing at
Speaker 5: my undergrad school, so that was like definitely my introduction there.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, like when I got into
Speaker 5: the workplace, I kind of real that media unions are
Speaker 5: maybe one of the only things that will keep the media,
Speaker 5: at least as currently exists, alive until we can come
Speaker 5: up with like some other model that is like more sustainable,
Speaker 5: because I mean, like I look at a company like
Speaker 5: Conde Nast and you have this like very well compensated,
Speaker 5: very like large cast of managers and middle managers yep,
Speaker 5: and then you have this like massive body of people
Speaker 5: actually producing the magazines, actually making like doing the work
Speaker 5: of the journalism and the culture reporting and the video
Speaker 5: making and so on. And so on, And you know,
Speaker 5: one of those groups is constantly subject to layoffs, one
Speaker 5: of those groups is constantly being made to say work
Speaker 5: over time and maybe being told not to build for
Speaker 5: as much over time as they're being made to work.
Speaker 5: And one of those groups is being extremely well compensated
Speaker 5: and has seemingly incredible job security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like all all of the resources are being sucked
Speaker 2: out by a combination of like these venture capitalist dipses
Speaker 2: at the top and then all of these fucking like
Speaker 2: middle miror management bureaucrats like who do not right.
Speaker 5: And the thing that slows that down is like workers
Speaker 5: having a say in the media, you know, like the
Speaker 5: people who actually can produce the work, like being able
Speaker 5: to say and these are the circumstances under which the
Speaker 5: work is going to be produced. I mean, I think
Speaker 5: it's no surprise that, like if you look at a
Speaker 5: publication like hell Gate or like Defector or like Aftermath
Speaker 5: and four or four, and all of these like worker
Speaker 5: co ops that are popping up kind of across the
Speaker 5: media ecosystem, like their worker owns, and they have this
Speaker 5: very kind of flat like payment structure where everybody is
Speaker 5: making around the same amount, like everybody has a say
Speaker 5: in the way that the workplace functions, and like these
Speaker 5: appear at least to me to be some of the
Speaker 5: most like stable media like organizations that are out there
Speaker 5: right now. And all that tells me is that like
Speaker 5: workplace democracy, I mean in like the truest sense of
Speaker 5: the word, you know, like workplace democracy as it is
Speaker 5: earned by like worker organizations, union's, worker co ops, whatever
Speaker 5: they might be, is the thing that's going to keep
Speaker 5: the media afloat. Like that is the model that is
Speaker 5: like sustainable in the long run. So I think that's
Speaker 5: one of the reasons that having like a strong and
Speaker 5: active Conde Nasty union, though management probably wouldn't agree, at
Speaker 5: least explicitly, it's like one of the things that can
Speaker 5: keep Conde Nast alive for as long as possible. Like
Speaker 5: you know, again, they would probably loath to admit this,
Speaker 5: but like an organization like the Conde Nast union can
Speaker 5: only exist as long as an organization like Conde Nast exists,
Speaker 5: their fates are kind of tied to one another.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, this is we're doing the incredibly esoteric via
Speaker 2: meta union three.
Speaker 3: There's two versions of looking at this one.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is the version where yeah, the Kandy NASA
Speaker 2: union is structurally dependent on the existence of Conde Nast,
Speaker 2: and this means that the power of the union is
Speaker 2: based on its ability to bring people.
Speaker 3: Back to work.
Speaker 2: However, come up, there is a second one you could
Speaker 2: theoretically have. You could theoretically have the Conde Nass union
Speaker 2: without Conde Nast, where we have CNT and it we've
Speaker 2: taken it over, we're running it now. We are just
Speaker 2: now the union. And you know, and the thing, the
Speaker 2: thing I will say about that, and this is always
Speaker 2: this has always been the advantage of co ops is that,
Speaker 2: like you are immediately from the ground up, you're going
Speaker 2: to have a kind of efficiency advantage because there is
Speaker 2: not an entire middle layer. Like because obviously, like there
Speaker 2: are like producers who do a bunch of work, like
Speaker 2: my boss Sophie.
Speaker 3: Like if we didn't have Sophie, none of this.
Speaker 2: Would work, right, Yeah, there's also a bunch of other
Speaker 2: people who have the same title who do nothing. And
Speaker 2: that's not even true. If they did nothing, it would
Speaker 2: be better. They interfere with everything constantly and get pay
Speaker 2: an exhordinary large amount of money to make everything work worse,
Speaker 2: and you don't have to have that entire bureaucratic layer,
Speaker 2: like the layer of middle management. And this has always
Speaker 2: been the massive just efficiency advantage that you have when
Speaker 2: workers running their own shit is that you don't have
Speaker 2: to have those people and the coordination that needs to
Speaker 2: be done. Okay, you have people doing the coordination. You
Speaker 2: don't have fifteen layers of dipshits whose job it is
Speaker 2: to run around making your job harder. This has been
Speaker 2: me talking about the organizational advantages of anarchy.
Speaker 5: It's great, Sorry, now you're fine. I mean, I will
Speaker 5: is like it's an interesting thing about Conde Nast and
Speaker 5: like a lot of I think these media conglomerates, it
Speaker 5: is like, you know, other than like when I am
Speaker 5: a member of the Conde Nasty union, and like I
Speaker 5: don't really interact with people who work elsewhere at Conde Nast,
Speaker 5: Like yeah, I interact with the people at my magazine
Speaker 5: and like the people at Bon Appetite and I like
Speaker 5: generally get along great. I have a really, really awesome
Speaker 5: relationship with my manager. I have a lot of admiration
Speaker 5: for him and.
Speaker 4: What he does.
Speaker 5: I think he's like the same way that you talk
Speaker 5: about Sophie. I think he's like really great at his job.
Speaker 5: I like have a good relationship with our editor in chief.
Speaker 5: I have a lot of respect for her as well.
Speaker 5: We have a really really solid system going where we
Speaker 5: are like able to make this food magazine every month
Speaker 5: and be able to keep this website online and able
Speaker 5: to make content that we're all like, you know, recipes
Speaker 5: and stories that we're all really really proud of. And
Speaker 5: then at the same time we were kind of subject
Speaker 5: to this like kind of bigger whatever media machine that's
Speaker 5: like kind of moving around ahead or above us, and
Speaker 5: also moving around like again with just like so little transparency.
Speaker 5: Like yeah, going back to the action on Wednesday the fifth,
Speaker 5: we have tried to have meetings with Stan, Like the
Speaker 5: executive that we talked to in the hallway, the executive
Speaker 5: that we marched on. We have tried to have meetings
Speaker 5: with him so many times in so many different ways.
Speaker 5: We have emailed him questions, not gotten responses. We have
Speaker 5: invited him to like town halls, not gotten responses. We
Speaker 5: invited him to meet with our diversity committee and labor
Speaker 5: relations got mad at us fore seeing him.
Speaker 4: On the email.
Speaker 3: God.
Speaker 5: Historically, like that kind of level of the company has
Speaker 5: been extremely averse to interacting with its workers to like
Speaker 5: answering basic questions, which is why, like when you look
Speaker 5: at you know, there's a video out there of the interaction,
Speaker 5: Like this is why we have to march on our
Speaker 5: bosses like this, because there's literally no other way to
Speaker 5: get a single answer out of them, because they kind
Speaker 5: of I mean they exist on this other floor of
Speaker 5: the company altogether, Like so, I don't know, it's it's
Speaker 5: very frustrating. It's frustrating to like kind of exist in
Speaker 5: this like dual system of like, well, we have a
Speaker 5: magazine that we are operating like very effectively on our own,
Speaker 5: and yet there's this entire thing above it that is
Speaker 5: making these decisions about how it ought to function and
Speaker 5: like what it ought to be doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and who don't know what it does because totally
Speaker 2: they're not there, Like they have absolutely no idea how
Speaker 2: your production actually functions.
Speaker 5: I would be surprised if the man who fired me
Speaker 5: knew what my job was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: All the old critiques of like the Soviet system, we're like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's just this out of touch bureaucraft three hundred miles
Speaker 2: away making production decisions.
Speaker 3: Blah blah, blah blah blah. It's like, oh, yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 2: Actually just like how your job works is some suit
Speaker 2: in like another building is like, oh, your jobs are
Speaker 2: all replaceable. Oh you can you can do this with
Speaker 2: like twenty percent less staff. Oh I don't even know
Speaker 2: what you do, but we're firing you because we hate
Speaker 2: you specifically.
Speaker 3: Like it's just a terrible way for the world to run.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 5: And I mean we have like these models of like
Speaker 5: what successful workplaces can look like, you know, like places
Speaker 5: with militant unions that like actually work, like actually give
Speaker 5: workers to say and what their conditions should be and
Speaker 5: what their conditions are, places that have gotten rid of
Speaker 5: the boss altogether, and like you know again those worker
Speaker 5: co ops that I listed, Like, there are these functional
Speaker 5: models of what the future of media can look like.
Speaker 5: And this is the thing that I say all the time.
Speaker 5: It is like the reason that I'm excited about being
Speaker 5: a member of the News Guild, the reason I got
Speaker 5: involved in organizing in the first place, is like I
Speaker 5: think there is a future of media, Like I think
Speaker 5: there is a way that like, you know, people like
Speaker 5: you and people like me, like people who write and
Speaker 5: tell stories and like are interested in like talking to
Speaker 5: people and getting their stories out there. I think there
Speaker 5: are sustainable ways that we can do that, And I
Speaker 5: think the people who know how to do like the
Speaker 5: sustainable future of this thing are the people who are
Speaker 5: making the product in the first place. Yeah, Like we
Speaker 5: are the ones with vision, Like we are the ones
Speaker 5: who know how to make something that can continue to
Speaker 5: exist sustainably, something that can like even under the capitalists
Speaker 5: like framework, Like something that can make money, something that
Speaker 5: can be profitable. A lot of the great journalists I
Speaker 5: know are like actually very interested in and very very
Speaker 5: good at making work that like generates quite a bit
Speaker 5: of revenue. And I don't think that's a particularly bad thing.
Speaker 5: Like they know how to do this in a way
Speaker 5: that is sustainable, in a way that keeps readers excited
Speaker 5: and engaged in like willing to like pitch in in
Speaker 5: their own ways. The problem is that the people who
Speaker 5: seem to have that know how, the people who make
Speaker 5: the thing and the people who know how to keep
Speaker 5: making the thing, and the people who are making the
Speaker 5: decisions like aren't the same people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And the way that you fix that divide, like is
Speaker 5: by demanding a seat at the table is by demanding
Speaker 5: the people who are making those decisions actually do listen
Speaker 5: to you, and then demanding that they actually follow through
Speaker 5: on the obligation or the things that they say they're
Speaker 5: going to do. One of the really frustrating things about
Speaker 5: my termination is like they're saying that I was like
Speaker 5: too aggressive and was harassing the chief people officer. Again,
Speaker 5: there's a video I think is extremely exonerating.
Speaker 3: Also, oh wow, the trends woman's being too aggressive? Wow?
Speaker 2: Wow crazy one day they're going to develop a second joke.
Speaker 4: Wow anything now? No, I know.
Speaker 5: Actually one thing some like Chud on the internet who
Speaker 5: was like trying to make fun of me, is that
Speaker 5: I was wearing a wig out like to stay for
Speaker 5: the record, I don't wear a wig.
Speaker 4: This is my hair. I grew it myself. It's took
Speaker 4: a while, thank you. I agree.
Speaker 5: Although one of my friends told me that I have
Speaker 5: turf bangs the other day, which I really actually it
Speaker 5: was the day that I got fired, come to think
Speaker 5: of it, because before they knew to be fair. But no,
Speaker 5: I know, sorry, what was I saying before that?
Speaker 2: I The last time I got owned that hard was
Speaker 2: what Bob called me a talking head.
Speaker 3: So you know it happens. Sometimes you get absolutely obliterated.
Speaker 4: But I love that band.
Speaker 3: It's good bad.
Speaker 5: But if the company like actually believed that I was,
Speaker 5: you know, being too aggressive or like committing I think
Speaker 5: the words that they used are like gross misconduct, Like
Speaker 5: I know, we have just caused protections in our contract
Speaker 5: that include like an explicit procedure that you're supposed to
Speaker 5: go through for gross miss conduct. Like if the the
Speaker 5: company was following the contract, if they felt the obligation
Speaker 5: to do so, what should have happened is they shouldn't
Speaker 5: have let me finished the rest of my work day. Instead,
Speaker 5: I should have been escorted out of the building by security.
Speaker 5: I should have been placed on a leave. There should
Speaker 5: have been an investigation with like time for me and
Speaker 5: the union to comment, and then a decision should have
Speaker 5: came out. And the entire time that should have been happening,
Speaker 5: I should have been paid. And like if that sounds greedy, okay,
Speaker 5: the company agreed to it, like they didn't have to
Speaker 5: sign the contract, but they did. But this is another
Speaker 5: like concerning trend that we're seeing right now with like
Speaker 5: you know, the gutted NLRB and like the kind of yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, shirking of NLRA like responsibilities from companies is
Speaker 5: like companies are like straight up gas lighting workers not
Speaker 5: things that are in the contracts that they agreed to.
Speaker 5: They are like pointing to the contract and saying that
Speaker 5: it says things that it doesn't say, or that it
Speaker 5: doesn't say things that are like right there for you
Speaker 5: and clearing English right before your eyes. Actually, another time
Speaker 5: that we tried to talk to Stan this year was
Speaker 5: so we're based out of New York, predominantly we have
Speaker 5: remote workers across the country. Although we were told just
Speaker 5: about everybody at the comp I need to start coming
Speaker 5: into the New York offices four days a week. There's
Speaker 5: a section of our contract that says that under a
Speaker 5: declared state of emergency, workers can stay home. Well, this
Speaker 5: summer in New York, listeners may remember, we had a
Speaker 5: really massive, like terrible heat wave, like temperatures up in
Speaker 5: the one hundreds every day, like going into the subway stations,
Speaker 5: and that week I remember feeling like I was baking.
Speaker 5: During the declared state of emergency, which again the contract
Speaker 5: says workers do not have to come into the office.
Speaker 5: The company said, we don't care, you have to come
Speaker 5: into the office paraphrasing those aren't there exact words, but
Speaker 5: they're not too far off. And again we said, okay,
Speaker 5: but the contract says under a declared state of emergency,
Speaker 5: we don't have to come into the office. And they
Speaker 5: said you have to come into the office four days
Speaker 5: a week, no exceptions. And it is maddening. I mean, no,
Speaker 5: that's life threatening, Like, oh, I mean yeah, absolutely, And
Speaker 5: I will say, like, you know, I've been at the
Speaker 5: company five years. That makes me a bit of a
Speaker 5: long hauler. Like we have people who have been at
Speaker 5: the company for like fifteen twenty years. Like there are
Speaker 5: people who are like near retirement age standing on a
Speaker 5: subway platform. Again, it's New York City. People aren't really
Speaker 5: in air conditioned cars driving to work. Like there are
Speaker 5: people for whom, like at all ages standing on a
Speaker 5: subway platform in that kind of heat is a really
Speaker 5: life threatening and like really dangerous thing to demand people do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is like one of the things that.
Speaker 5: We were thinking about when we like fought for that
Speaker 5: contract language and like one of the things that we
Speaker 5: were thinking about when we were like nearly ready, like
Speaker 5: in fact that we were ready to go on strike. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and like disrupt the net Gala in May of twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four. Like, that is one of the things that
Speaker 5: we were thinking about when we drafted that, and one
Speaker 5: of the things we were really excited that the company
Speaker 5: agreed to give us when we won our contract. And
Speaker 5: so for them to immediately just say, oh, just kidding, well,
Speaker 5: oh well, now if we file a grievance, it might
Speaker 5: take like months directify, well, just kidding, those rights that
Speaker 5: we gave you, they don't exist anymore. Sorry. And again
Speaker 5: it is like clear, easy to understand language that they
Speaker 5: are somehow willing to just say, like the contract doesn't
Speaker 5: say what it says.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because I mean, you know, there's like the
Speaker 2: one here in like companies have always like not followed contracts.
Speaker 2: It's always been like, Okay, if you want your contract
Speaker 2: to do what it says it does, you have to force.
Speaker 3: Them to do it.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, like the thing that it
Speaker 2: reminds me of is like one of the things happened
Speaker 2: with the Trump administration. Whenever talking about them pissing off
Speaker 2: their bases, there's been a bunch of unions that they've
Speaker 2: just unilaterally been this is said, this is national security.
Speaker 2: We don't recognize your contract anymore. So for example, like
Speaker 2: the the funny version of is they did this at
Speaker 2: a prison guard union, which is hilarious.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, I don't know you guys. You guys
Speaker 3: shat in your own bed.
Speaker 2: Now you have to lie in it, Like I don't
Speaker 2: know what to tell you, but like yeah, but like
Speaker 2: you know, the national government has been doing this to
Speaker 2: a bunch of unions. Is they've just been going totally,
Speaker 2: we know that we don't have to follow this contract anymore.
Speaker 2: It's national security and that's the future that all of
Speaker 2: these people want and that they're like, you know, this
Speaker 2: is part of what they're fighting for. This is part
Speaker 2: of that fight, is that they want to fight where
Speaker 2: contract union contracts don't exist and they could just do
Speaker 2: whatever they want to anyone.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's also like a clear line you can
Speaker 5: draw from say like like the Reagan era and the
Speaker 5: like air traffic controller unions strike break, and then like
Speaker 5: the way that from like the federal government unions, and
Speaker 5: like the way that the federal government treats its unions
Speaker 5: that like basically the rest of the American labor movement
Speaker 5: and rather the management side responses to the American labor
Speaker 5: movement generally flow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, is there anything else that you want to
Speaker 3: make sure that people know.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, in the coming days and weeks, the
Speaker 5: union is planning a lot to fight back against the company.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that said. One of the things that we
Speaker 5: know most about media organizations generally is that they are
Speaker 5: very concerned about public pressure and they are very concerned
Speaker 5: about public image. This is like APR obsessed industry for
Speaker 5: better and for worse. So we are hoping that like
Speaker 5: readers and you know, fans and followers will keep the
Speaker 5: pressure up against Conde Nast to show like employers like
Speaker 5: them that like, we will not stand for this. We
Speaker 5: have an Action Network petition up right now that we
Speaker 5: are going to keep collecting signatures for that we hope
Speaker 5: to deliver to management soon depending on once it comes out.
Speaker 5: I mean, we'll be collecting signatures regardless, and that is
Speaker 5: also one of the best ways signing on to that.
Speaker 5: We'll get you out dates for other ways that you can,
Speaker 5: you know, support us from the outside. But otherwise, I mean,
Speaker 5: we've got a lot of fighting to do, We've got
Speaker 5: a lot of organizing to do. I certainly don't think
Speaker 5: my days at Conde Naster over, I expect that, like
Speaker 5: however long it takes for the law of shakeout, like
Speaker 5: I hope to be reinstated, as do the other like
Speaker 5: three terminated employees. I also am certain that like we
Speaker 5: will be able to win justice for ourselves and the
Speaker 5: other people who were like illegally retaliatorally disciplined following the action.
Speaker 5: And I also think that this is nowhere near the
Speaker 5: last action that Conde Nast upper management should expect. If
Speaker 5: anything like this is just showing us that if we
Speaker 5: want our contract to be enforced, if we want the
Speaker 5: rights that they said that they would give us, we
Speaker 5: are going to have to keep holding them to account
Speaker 5: and we are going to have to keep fighting for them.
Speaker 2: Trying to figure out whether or not I can get
Speaker 2: away with saying you have sown the wind and now
Speaker 2: the whirlwind.
Speaker 5: Oh god, you have so own the bond appetite, and
Speaker 5: now you will get the I can't finish that.
Speaker 3: You've sewed the butt appetite. Now you'll get teen votes to.
Speaker 5: You have sewn the bond and now you'll get the appetite.
Speaker 5: That doesn't mean anything, that's on anything.
Speaker 2: You know, Look, it's a struggling time for the whole industry. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and if people want to find you, do you want
Speaker 2: to be found a n B? If people want to
Speaker 2: find you, where can they find your work?
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 5: I plan to keep writing and doing journalism for the
Speaker 5: however long I can allowed to keep doing that. So
Speaker 5: I'm on basically every website as at Goodbye Almah, including
Speaker 5: the Evil ones sadly. I also I co edit a
Speaker 5: literary magazine with my friend Joyce. That's called Picnic Magazine.
Speaker 5: It's very cool. It's all work by trans contributors. We
Speaker 5: are predominantly a print first publication. You can find us
Speaker 5: at picnicmag on Instagram. We're also on Blue Sky. I
Speaker 5: should have prepared our at but I'm sure I can
Speaker 5: send that to you afterwards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well we'll put it in that, We'll put it
Speaker 3: in the station.
Speaker 5: And yeah, we are available in a few bookstores in
Speaker 5: big cities across the country. We also have a you
Speaker 5: can download our PDF and a pay what you want
Speaker 5: kind of way. We have a second issue coming soon.
Speaker 5: Although it turns out making a magazine with just two
Speaker 5: trans women and it's really difficult, So yeah.
Speaker 4: Check that out. It's all fiction.
Speaker 5: Criticism and poetry by trans contributors and yeah, follow me
Speaker 5: at Goodbye Alma Online.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: If you want actual news that's fit to print, you're
Speaker 3: going to have to fight for it.
Speaker 4: Amen to that says there.
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