(📸 bottom photographs taken from a December 12 Onion Union tweet)
The Onion Union, which covers the creative staff The Onion, The A.V. Club, Deadspin, and The Takeout, has officially signed off on a strike action that will begin on January 31 if a deal is not reached with G/O Media.
Members of the unit agreed to the following pledge, which summarizes what they're looking for in collective bargaining:
We, the undersigned members of the Onion Inc. Union, are committed to a collective bargaining agreement that reflects the realities of the economy, our changing industry, and the issues most important to our unit. These include competitive compensation, raises that keep up with cost of living, AI protections, and a slate of benefits that align with G/O Media's stated interest in worker well-being.
Onion Union's bargaining unit has been severely gutted by the past few years by G/O Media—when it originally unionized in 2018, it consisted of over 80 members. A mixture of layoffs and G/O Media's refusal to fill open positions has contributed to that massive attrition, and the union is hoping to prevent further gutting of the unit. The union is also fighting against a number of other management-imposed pressures. Several months back for example this account profiled G/O Media's shuttering of Gizmodo en Español, which it shamelessly "replaced" with machine translation in a pivot to "AI". Earlier last year The Verge also profiled the company's disastrous use of AI generation for stories.