On Jan. 29, 2021 Daily Kos management was notified that the Daily Kos staff intended to form a union with the Pacific Media Workers Guild. On Feb. 5, Daily Kos informed staff that it would voluntarily recognize the union, and it began working with the Guild to finalize the bargaining unit and begin the certification process. After nearly seven months, the certification process has not even started due to a dispute regarding union eligibility of just six employees out of approximately 80 in the company. As is, nearly two-thirds of staff qualify for the union. Simply put, the Guild wants to include some, but not all, managers who directly hire, fire, and supervise other union-eligible employees—something that presents conflicts of interest and increases legal liabilities.
All we have asked, as you can see in the emails in the folder linked below, is a single standard we can apply company-wide, so we’re determining union eligibility by the position, not by the person who holds the role. You can further see how the union representative (Michael Applegate) promised to interview some staff members in disputed roles management did not hear from directly. The purpose of those interviews was to identify whether those staffers' roles are similar to those of the employees they manage, and whether those staffers are given the authority specified in their job descriptions. It has been nearly five months since the union rep promised to conduct these interviews, yet we have not heard anything from her about the interviews. Management has also never received information on alleged new duties assigned to these staffers despite requests.
The emails in the linked folder show that Daily Kos management is happy to recognize this union, but we also insist that we have a consistent standard that applies to all employees. We have offered to work with the people in disputed positions to ensure they have the authority granted to them in their job description. We have offered to have a third party evaluate and offer recommendations on job leveling to clearly define who is and who is not actually conducting management responsibilities. We offered to remove the reporting relationships so that these staffers are no longer supervising union-eligible employees and can join the union themselves. All of these offers were rejected. And to be clear—despite Guild assertions to the contrary—every supervisor in the organization has the authority to request to hire and/or fire an employee, which passes through appropriate channels (Finance, Human Resources, Legal, etc.)—and most of the disputed managers have even done so this very year.
The Guild has had the power since day one to have this issue resolved. The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) is the federal agency that administers the National Labor Relations Act, which governs all private employer/union relations. One of the NLRB’s core functions is to resolve supervisory disputes. They are experts at making these determinations, and this is the normal and customary course of action when parties cannot agree on supervisors status. We have suggested using the NLRB’s processes many times and continue to encourage the Guild to file an NLRB petition so that this issue can be put behind us. Simply put, they have the power to move this process forward.
To stress, all we ask for is a single standard to determine which positions are union-eligible and which are not. As we’ve proposed many times, we are happy to have the NLRB adjudicate this matter, and there is nothing preventing us from doing that today.
For the sake of transparency, Daily Kos is posting our written communications between the Daily Kos Guild and management publicly and you can find it here.
Daily Kos supports workers’ rights to organize and we support those efforts here at Daily Kos as well. That’s why we voluntarily recognized the Daily Kos Guild in early February. I hope that we’ll soon certify the union and begin the collective bargaining process.