As readers of TPM, I wanted to share with you that today I signed a three year collective bargaining agreement with the TPM union, represented by WGA East.
I am proud to say that TPM immediately recognized our editorial employees’ union without conditions or negotiations back on May 10th of last year. Signing today was just a formality. The agreement was ratified and agreed to at the end of May this year.
On balance, I’d say the process went pretty smoothly. We’re happy with the result on the management side. Though I won’t speak for them, I assume that the same is true on the bargaining unit side as well. Let me also publicly thank David Kurtz and Joe Ragazzo who were the negotiators for the company and navigated the process on that side of the table.
To me the best part of this is that it aligns us, everyone at TPM, even more clearly and firmly around the joined goal of making TPM the best news organization it can be and navigating our on-going transition to a subscription-focused business model. That is our critical work and I’ll be sharing some more thoughts on that soon. The membership-focus also aligns us, our future and livelihood, more firmly with the satisfaction of you, our readers. That applies to a degree to all people who read stories at TPM. But it applies mostly to our committed audience – the people who come to the site on a regular basis, often daily or multiple times a day.
That today is how a news organization lives or dies, not with social shares or tech-driven distribution models of VC investments functioning as revenue streams.
If you’re a member, we all thank you. If you’re not, please consider joining, both to get all the things membership brings but also, just as much, to support our work.
