WGA East Seals Tentative Deal With Vox Media Management, Narrowly Avoiding Strike

The Writers Guild of America East narrowly avoided a strike against Vox Media, announcing a tentative new three-year deal with management in the early hours of Friday morning.
The current contract was set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, and the union had already authorized a strike a few hours prior.
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Now, the deal needs approval from the WGAE Council's Online Media sector representatives as well as the 250-member Vox Media Union. The union says that details on the contract will be released upon ratification.
AI, increased wages and benefits, and additional severance and layoff procedures were among the priorities during this bargaining cycle. There have been multiple rounds of layoffs at Vox Media recently, including in January when the company let go of around 7% of its workforce.
The news of this deal comes just over a month after Vox Media sold video game website Polygon to Valnet, which currently owns several entertainment-related aggregation sites including Screen Rant, Game Rant, and Comic Book Resources. That movie also reportedly resulted in mass layoffs at the site, prompting an outcry from the union.
'It is hard to fathom management's commitment to its workers and its readers when this marks the fifth round of layoffs in just the last six months,' the WGAE statement said at the time.
The Vox Media Union represents workers across Vox.com, The Verge, Eater, SB Nation, Pop Sugar, Thrillist, Vox Media Podcast Network and The Dodo. Deadline parent company Penske Media Corporation has a stake in Vox Media.
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