It Could Happen Here - The Conde Nast Union Busting Purge

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Mia talks with Alma Avalle, a former staffer at Bon Appetite and VP of the News Guild of New York, about her firing in the wake of Conde Nast’s Teen Vogue purge https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-conde-bosses-to-reinstate-the-fired-four-reverse-the-suspensions-and-end-the-union-busting @goodbyealma @picnic_magSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to naked app and hear a podcast telling you to rage against the dying of the light. I am your host, Mia Wong. And many episodes ago, significantly more tearfully, I talked about. how you know watching the trans voices in media get fired and disappear felt like watching the stars disappear in the sky and today I am here to say do not go gently into that good night fuck him rage against the dying of the light and with me to rage against the dying of the light and talk about some absolute bullshit is alma ovae who is a former staffer at bon appetit and we will be getting into why that's now technically former and the VP of the news guild of new york

Alma, welcome to the show. Hey, Mia, lovely to be here. I wish it was under better circumstances. I feel like everyone I talk to, I go, I wish you were just under better circumstances, but, you know. Yeah, circumstances across the board are kind of trash right now. Yeah, they're really bad. The circumstances, they do be, they do, they do, they do be shit. So these specifically bad circumstances are one, Condé Nast has just obliterated Teen Vogue,

which had been one of the few actually very good progressive outlets. It's also one of the few outlets that would publish trans people regularly, and it's just gone now. And Alma and three of her colleagues were fired for very productive union activity being like, hey, what the fuck? And we kind of terms of that. I can say this because it's not my ass in the line. Yeah, do you want to talk a bit about what happened? Yeah, totally. I mean, to give the company its caveat, technically Teen Vogue still exists.

It has just been moved under the broader organization of Vogue. They've now said that its coverage areas will include professional development, as well as, well, there were a couple of other things that they highlighted. But certainly the things that they did not highlight include, say, you know, scathing coverage of the Trump administration or coverage of trans youth and trans health care bands for teenagers, coverage of, like, young celebrities of color and so on. But, yeah, anyway, I guess to just go back to the start of the timeline, last Monday, we at the News Guild and, you know, at the Condonast Union, which is the union that represents basically every worker or every journalist and video maker at Conday Nast, except for those in the New Yorker, they are in like a separate bargaining unit that we see as like, you know, linked sibling units, or linked sibling unions. We do most of our organizing together and our contracts are nearly identical. Yeah, I know, right? Union siblings. It's adorable.

Yeah. We tried to stay close. But anyway, we got word last Monday that about two-thirds of the staff of Teen Vogue were being laid off, including a friend of mine. And I think former guest on your show, actually, Lex McManamaneman. Yeah. Who was the politics editor at Teen Vogue, as well as a few of their culture editors, basically, like, if they were covering, I mean, being a little glib here, but like, if they were covering, say, like, trans rights, trans youth. progressive culture in nearly any way, shape, or form, they were either laid off or the remaining workers were folded into the larger organization of Vogue. And I think they're still figuring out

exactly where they fit into that organization and what, like, youth coverage looks like going forward. So that happened last Monday, which was obviously a massive loss. I sat in on a lot of the like the wine garden meetings going over the exit packages for those employees, a lot of like really sad and tearful meetings that day. We should point out, this is being recorded on Monday the 10th, Last Monday is Monday, November 3rd. Not sure when this is going to come out, but yeah, just to make the timeline clear here. Yes, absolutely. That's November 3rd.

Yeah, that was Monday, November 3rd. Yeah, thank you for the correction. And then two days later at the company, we got a notification that there was another round of layoffs. This one hitting, I believe, folks on the video teams, and then people on the, like, copy and fact-checking section of the company as well. This was super disruptive. Usually, you know, at a company like Condé Nass. while the union doesn't have like explicit protections for this and in fact like the company has the right to perform layoffs if they need to for business reasons usually when a round of layoffs

goes through there's like a period of peace that comes after that you know like there will be you know a reduction in force we'll figure out okay how are we going to keep doing our jobs now that we have fewer staffers yeah and then if the company needs to like reduce the staff again that will happen like a few months maybe a year in the future two rounds of layoffs in the same week had people really, really scared and really stressed out because, I mean, for one, there's like just the sense of like, oh, God, a lot of my coworkers are gone. How am I going to be able to keep doing my job? We lost at my magazine, Bon Appetit, we lost our social media director, the person who was basically running our social accounts. We'd gotten notification from the

company that editors were going to be doing their own posting from then on, which is just not how things, not how things I've ever worked before, not really a thing that they're like, you know, my colleagues These are brilliant, and many of them are brilliant, like, users of social media, but, like, not really a part of our jobs historically. So we're all pretty confused how we were supposed to, you know, actually keep running our magazine. Most of our magazines are already running on pretty reduced staffs in the first place. Yeah. Yeah.

So, anyway, between that and the kind of obvious political connection that one could draw, or at least, like, that a lot of our members were afraid of, you know, Teen Vogue being this, like, pretty famously radical, or at the very least, like, pretty famously progressive publication, doing some like really, really hard-hitting journalism. There's a really clear line you can draw between like all of the Colbert and Jimmy Kibble, but also like the CBS stuff with Barry Weiss, like this kind of broader right-wing shift in media. You can draw, I think, a direct line between all of that and like the shuttering or near-shuttering of Teen Vogue. So we did a thing that we basically always do when we're facing an issue like this, whether

it's a big reduction in force or just some decision from the upper levels of the management that have all of the workers being like, wait, what the fuck did you just do? We had a rally in the cafeteria to go over some of the questions that we all have for management. We created a list of questions that we wanted to ask, and I cannot stress how, like, routine this is for us as a union. We went from the cafeteria, which is on the 35th floor of the World Trade Center, down to the executive floor, which is directly below it on the 34th floor of the World Trade Center. And we walked over to the executive offices and said, we have some questions for Stan Duncan, who is the head of the people team at Condaynast,

basically one of the people in charge of either making these decisions of staffing and reduction and then of enforcing those decisions as well. We went down to speak with Stan Duncan, ask him some of our questions. Two other HR employees came out in medicine hallway. We said we'd like to speak to Stan. We were happy to ask them our questions, but they said they wouldn't be particularly good at answering them or they might not have good answers for us. but Stan, they said

was in a meeting at the time. It just so happened that either Stan's meeting ended right then or maybe he heard people talking in the hallway and decided to come check it out. Or maybe there wasn't a meeting. But for whatever reason, Stan happened to come out into the hallway at that time.

And so we started trying to ask him our questions. Some of those questions included, was the closing of Teen Vogue inherently political, but also how are we going to be able to do our jobs going forward? How are we supposed to keep running these magazines if you're going to keep cutting our jobs, and then also how are we supposed to keep doing our jobs

if we are constantly living in fear of losing them, you know? Stan does not answer any of these questions. Of course. Yeah, no, naturally. He tells us we're not allowed to congregate in the hallway. This is not true. Of course we... What?

Well, yeah, we, I mean, one, this is our workplace. We, I think, are allowed to have conversations in the hallway of our workplace. Two, I mean, if he was saying that we weren't allowed to, say, take part in union activities in the workplace, we have a right under Section 7 of the NLRA that says we can do that. We also have, like, contract provisions that say the company will not infringe upon our right to organize and demonstrate in the workplace. So that just wasn't true. And in fact, the union, before everything else happened, already filed a grievance about denying our Section 7 rights to organize in the workplace. God.

Yeah. Yeah, yep, yep. So anyway, Stan tries to get us to go back to our desks. He walks across the floor, tells us to follow him. We follow him and keep asking questions. He says that we have to go back and do our jobs. We say, we will happily do our jobs if you could just answer our questions. He tells us that we have to go back to our workplaces.

We remind him, this is our workplace. And anyway, we end up asking him those questions. We follow him back and forth along the hallway. He goes back into his office, closes the door. We all go back to our desks for the rest of the day. I finished up my work and I go home. and then I get notification from the News Guild at 7 that the company has notified them that they are terminating me and three of my colleagues.

Jesus Christ. No severance, no ongoing insurance coverage. My insurance expires at the end of the month. Oh, my God. No notice, no investigation effective immediately. So as of last Wednesday, I am no longer an employee of Condé Nast. I had been working there for five years. I helped start the Condé Nast Union in the time since I joined the,

there. I was one of the most tenured members of my magazine, actually. People don't generally stick around there for a long time. But at 27 years old, I was a long hauler, Mia. And yeah, in the time since then, our union has filed a second grievance. There was the first one over telling us we couldn't congregate. There's now a second one over the retaliatory firings of me and my three colleagues. The company has since put five other people, I believe, on an unpaid leave in like an attempt to discipline more people who took part in the demonstration. Yeah. It's kind of hard to see rhyme or reason in the people that they decided to discipline.

So I was speaking quite a bit during the demonstration, as was one of the other people who was terminated. One person asked one question that was at Jake LaHood at Wired. He asked a question towards the beginning, which was, what is your definition of congregate when they told us we can't congregate in the hallway? Mm-hmm. which I think is a perfectly valid question. And then one person who was terminated actually, as far as I know, didn't speak at all during the demonstration.

He was, however, the vice president of the New Yorker Union, the vice chair of the New Yorker Union. And, you know, an organizer that the company was, like, very well aware of. And then as for the people who were placed on disciplinary leaves, I mean, I believe some of them actually spoke significantly more than some of the people who were terminated during the demonstration. But we're certainly, like, historically at the very least, less visible and less vocal union organizers.

So the trend that we're seeing is that the people who spoke up were either people who had been historically very active in the union or in Jake's case, somebody who was doing really, really impressive coverage of the Trump administration

and like really, really hard-hitting journalism against, like, Doge and like the general, like, efforts of the right right now to, you know, I mean, listeners of this podcast know everything that's going on there. Mm-hmm.

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There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business genius. along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked.

Like Thomas Edison and the Electives Chess. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm going to say this and I'm going to adopt preferred language of these professionals, which is to say that, and this is the preferred language of management, is that some people are calling this both a return. of resegregation and an obvious anti-union political purge because it is a bunch of trans people and a bunch of non-white people who have been eliminated from Teen Vogue. You know, this is something that you were talking about earlier about drawing the connection between this and CBS? I'm like, yeah, what did Barry Weiss do when she got into CBS? She fired

like every non-white person who worked there, right? Because their overt political plan is resegregation. And, you know, in order to do resegregation, you fire all of the people who are non-white. You get rid of any trans people, and you get, I mean, admittedly it's CBS. It's not like they had like a giant like, like, it wasn't like a, like a haven of trans politics in the first place. I mean, they had some, like, you know, there's people there who are like cool, but like,

it wasn't like, you know, it's, it's not, it wasn't like Teen Vogue, which genuinely had way more trans coverage than like any other outlet. No, totally. Like, and I cannot emphasize enough. Like, the extent to which this is the most normal union activity in the entire world and to which this is the most protected category in the entire world,

and, you know, obviously a bunch of the bosses and a bunch of like the corporations that are doing this shit, like don't think the NLRA should exist and like is like a legally valid thing, but it's still in force right now and so, well, mostly. But like for this? Yeah, still enforce.

So they're just unbelievably hideously illegal retaliatory firings that are illegal in like so many different ways. It's baffling. Like it's like you need like a second law degree to find every single law that just broke. Totally. I mean, the thing that I would point out, too, is like, like you said, this is an extremely common type of union action, like, across the entire labor movement.

Everyone does this. Everyone marches on the boss. We also specifically, like, as a union, we've marched on the boss, like, tons of different times. Yeah. We've marched on Stan multiple times in the past. There was one demonstration where we all marched on Stan during contract bargaining, actually, last year, where we had significantly more people, and I will say, being much more confrontational. I remember, like, a large crowd booing him in front of, like, the entire executive floor. And I would say, like, two to three times as many people present watching in a much more, like, loud and activated and energetic forum.

But we've had marches on other executives. We've had marches on editors in chief in the past. And, I mean, one of the reasons that, like, when I got the news that I was being terminated, I, like, basically went into shock. This felt extremely tame compared to past union actions that we've done. And also, no one has ever been disciplined for taking part in any action like this in the past, like, let alone terminated. Like, as far as I know, no one's ever been called into a meeting and said, like, you shouldn't have done that and we're keeping an eye on you. So this is like a massive escalation on the company's side in terms of retaliation. And, I mean, that's also what we've heard kind of across the board at the News Guild.

You know, I've been in close conversations with our president and with other like organizers at the Guild who have said, and this is, you know, our local union that organizes a bunch of different. publications in New York City and kind of in the surrounding area. This is one of the most egregious examples of retaliation that just about anybody I've talked to has seen in our union's history. And there's like pretty, I think valid concern that like if a company like Condane asked is able to get away with this, like other companies within our union are going to like follow suit and like take this as their cue, which is both scary but also has been energizing for a lot of people. We've seen like a lot of folks really excited to like show up and join our fight and get involved in any way that they can.

Hell yeah. The other thing that I would point out based on what you were saying is, so Codney Nust has a queer publication, Them.us, which I think is one of the all-time URLs for a queer publication you possibly have. Very funny. So between them and Teen Vogue,

you had a lot of the companies like trans staffers. They kind of function as like sister publications. They like sit next to each other. They work closely together. Outside of them, as far as I know, I was the only trans woman implied on editorial Acconday Nest, and I am certainly the only trans woman in our union, including at them, actually.

Them, all of the trans woman employees there, to my understanding, are not part of the unit. They are in management positions, which, yay, representation, but also means that, like, I was obviously in this, like, very lonely position, but also this very, like, visible and, like, clearly very vulnerable position, where it's, like, incredibly easy to single somebody like me, out. I would also say during our contract fight, we had a lot of back and forth between, like,

me and company management about their coverage under the health care plan. Namely, they excluded facial feminization surgery, which meant that, like, if you were an employee of Condi Nast and you wanted facial feminization surgery, you were either out of luck or had to find a way to raise about $50,000, based on a lot of estimates that I've seen. If you're really lucky and good and you're going to go to Thailand, you can maybe get it for 30K. Yeah, right. No, exactly. Exactly. Which, admittedly, the Thailand stuff is cool, but like... No, totally.

I mean, it's like... All-power too. That's... It's a lot of fucking money. Totally. So much shit. It sucks so badly. Even more if you want to recover in your own home and your own bed.

Yeah, actually, and we weren't able to resolve that in the contract. I got FFS this year and to do it, I had to go on like a New York State Marketplace plan. Oh, no. Jesus Christ. I had both plans active at the same time. But I had to get like secondary insurance that cost. $700 a month in order to get FFS covered. Oh my God. Yeah. And that still ended up being significantly cheaper. Yep, yep, yep, yep. I mean, and frankly, like, Condé Nast never covered it.

Yeah. Who did cover it was, like, lots of my union colleagues who jumped in and, like, created a go fund me for me and, like, helped him raise, like, all of the money that I needed to get surgery and very, very thankful for that. But anyway, point being, like, the company does not exactly have the best track record when it comes to, and like, I feel very qualified to say this as, like, the trans woman in the Condé Nast Union. Yeah. The company does not exactly have the best track record in terms of, like, how they have treated us and me specifically around trans issues.

Yeah. So being, like, again, kind of singled out in this way, and then being hit with, like, this significant piece of retaliation. It just feels really telling. And also, I mean, really disappointing, frankly. Like, I've been at Condé for, or I keep using the present tense. I'd been at Condé for five years. And, you know, I liked my job.

I was really good at my job. I hope that they will reverse course and turn this around. But anyway, it's disappointing. It's disappointing that, like, that doesn't really seem to mean anything when the rubber hits the road. Yeah, I think there's two ways you can look at it. One is it's like, oh, yeah, of course the one trans woman in this bargaining unit was like the VP of the union. Because, like, yeah, transfims do be organizing. We do, we do this.

Ain't that the truth. But then the second thing, and you were talking about this, like, yeah, the magazines are already understaffed. and they're just destroying them. You know, and this is something that I can say, which is like, it's something we saw from Jeff Bezos, right? When Jeff Bezos sort of, like, took control of the Washington Post

and then gradually sort of purged their staff and, like, you know, has this whole thing now about how, oh, we're supposed to be pro-free market and pro-individual liberties, which does not include trans rights. You know, if you look at what happened to the Washington Post's subscriber account, it's like nothing.

It's like the paper is dying. It's effectively just, like, it's not like an actual functional like profit making thing anymore like it's just it's just the sort of propaganda vanity outlet of a billionaire and that's you know that's probably what's going to happen to CBS is that it's going to just get sort of annihilized stripped down because these people don't want a functioning media they don't give a shit if these things actually work because what what they're trying to do right now is accumulate raw accumulate just raw power and attempt to do raw sort of narrative and media control in order to stay in power and it's not working because everyone's still

hates them. Even though they bought all the newspapers, everyone is like, these people suck. Like, but this is the thing we run into with union stuff all the time, which is like, yeah, there are a lot of bosses who would rather their own company be non-functional. You know, their workers have any voice in it. And especially now in this political moment in which, oh, hey, look, the fascists are trying to seize control of the media. That becomes increasingly more and more an option of just, fuck it, we'll just like get handouts from like the tech fascists forever. And in exchange for that, we'll publish whatever propaganda garbage they want to spit out. Yeah. I mean, I would also say, like, I'm not sure I get about across the entire company,

although I believe it was one of the better traffic stories that Condon asked all year. But one of the most, certainly one of the most trafficked teen vogue stories in this past year was like out of their politics section. It was the Vivian Wilson, Elon Musk's trans daughter cover story. Yeah, really, really good. An amazing piece of journalism and also a piece that went like super viral. and I'm sure made a ton of money for the company. Yeah.

And so one would think, you know, looking at like the trends of the past, that if that was going to inform anything, like, the company would actually say, like, more politics coverage, like more progressive coverage out of Teen Vogue. Well, and like, I remember I don't have the exact numbers on me because I'm a hack and a fraud, but if it wasn't a hack and a fraud, I would have the exact numbers from the coverage of, like, the increase in both revenue generation and, like, readership that Teen Vogue underwent once they started doing politics stuff on to their first Trump administration. And now you're getting rid of that for what are clearly business reasons and are clearly very, very clearly not related to the fact that there is a bunch of

a bunch of political pressure from a bunch of fascists to run the government now. Yeah. I mean, obviously we don't have like perfect insight into like what's going on behind closed doors at Conday Nass. But I can't say that we had a diversity committee meeting with our joint union management diversity committee a week before all of this went down. And they told us that they were, you know, paraphrasing here, but management said that they are actively trying to avoid the attention and the ire of the Trump administration, which at the time definitely raised some eyebrows. And I think like led to the big response last week of like, oh, by actively avoid the attention of the Trump administration, you meant just like get rid of the parts of the company that are like hostile

towards it. And I mean, kind of too, like the good business of progressive coverage, I've covered a lot beats in my time of Bon Appetit, but there was a period where I was covering, like, the Starbucks worker's United Fight pretty closely. A lot of articles about that in my back pocket. Those generally did really well. Actually, one of the first times I faced, like, big right-wing backlash online was covering the, like, Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light protest, which I used as an opportunity to write about the, like, the Korslight boycotts of, like, the West Coast queer worker movement and, like, kind of the birth of the, like, gay labor movement. One of my best traffic of all time stories. I wrote about the like why the watermelon symbol became like

such a big kind of like rally and cry and like Palestine organizing over the past few years. Again, massive traffic winner for the company. But every time, you know, we get into these meetings with management or every time we like hear about the direction that the company is shifting or like coverage is shifting, it always seems away from those kind of hot button issues that like there's clearly an appetite for stories about. And instead towards, well, whatever it's towards, you know. yeah and you know and you can look at this like there's been a whole bunch of uh there was a story recently about dr oz like pivoting his whole thing into doing like a right wing like media grift and nobody's watching it like the the average episode of it could happen here absolutely

annihilates like just like like orders of magnitude better than like no i think it was dr phil yeah it was dr phil who just like they're like the same guy like wow that's okay that's slightly unfair to dr oz well yeah dr phil did this like did the right wing pivot and like nobody's listening to the show. It's like, no one. This is, like, one of the most famous people in United States getting annihilated by, like, Mia and the tready crew. Like, it could happen here. Like, oh, wow. You know, and yeah, like, there, there is this, like, massive demand for this stuff as, like, people increasingly realize that, oh, yeah, wait, hold on, we're getting every single person, like, in the country is, like, almost individually getting screwed over

by the Trump administration, he's like individually micro-targeting every single part of his base and pissing them off. Like there was the whole farmer's soy thing right. And like he's like, I guess he hasn't negotiated soybean sales now. But like, you know, you can look at like, so he was fighting this whole war with his entire farming base. And then

he immediately turned around from there and went to fight the cattle ranchers. It's like, there's so much appetite for any critique of this because it's so obviously just like malignant and narcissistically violent. And all of these companies that are like, you know, like this has always been the problem with the free press is that like the u.s does not have a free press

the u.s is a capitalist press and so you know you can just buy them or apply enough political pressure and they will fall in line and that's like what they're doing here so what you're saying is we need a left-wing joe rogan i'm going to become the joker no of course i mean i'll also say like i i I became an organizer in the News Guild for a lot of reasons, right? Like, Bon Appetitia was my first job out of college, and I was really involved covering the dining workers organizing at my undergrad school. So that was, like, definitely my introduction there. But at the same time, like, when I got into the workplace,

I kind of realized that media unions are maybe one of the only things that will keep the media, at least as currently exists alive, until we can come up with, like, some other model that is, like, more sustainable. because, I mean, like, I look at a company like Conday Nast, and you have this, like, very well-compensated, very, like, large cast of managers and middle managers. Yep. And then you have this, like, massive body of people actually producing the magazines, actually making, like, doing the work of the journalism and the culture reporting and the video making and so on and so on. And, you know, one of those groups is constantly subject to layoffs. One of those groups is constantly being made to, say, work over time and maybe being told not to bill for as much overtime as they're being needed to work.

And one of those groups is being extremely well compensated and has seemingly incredible job security. Yeah. Like all of the resources are being sucked out by a combination of like these venture capitalists dips at the top and then all of these fucking like middle management bureaucrats like who do nothing. Right. And the thing that slows that down is like workers having a say in the media, you know, like the people who actually can produce the work like being. able to say, and these are the circumstances under which the work is going to be produced. I mean, I think it's no surprise that, like, if you look at a publication, like, Hellgate or, like, Defector or, like, aftermath in 404 and all of these, like, worker co-ups that are popping

up kind of across the media ecosystem, like, their worker owns, and they have this, like, very kind of flat, like, payment structure where everybody is making around the same amount, like, everybody has a say in the way that the workplace functions. And, like, these appear, at least to me to be some of the most like stable media like organizations that are out there right now and all that tells me is that like workplace democracy i mean in like the truest sense of the word you know workplace democracy as it is earned by like worker organizations unions worker co-ops whatever they might be is the thing that's going to keep the media afloat like that is the model that is like sustainable in the long run so i think that's one of the reasons that having like a strong

and active condi-nast union though management probably wouldn't agree um at least except explicitly is, like, one of the things that can keep Kondaynast alive for as long as possible. Like, you know, again, they would probably loathe to admit this. But, like, an organization like the Kandai Nast Union can only exist as long as an organization like Kondaynast exists. Their fates are kind of tied to one another. Well, okay, this is, we're doing the incredibly esoteric via union theory. There's two versions of looking at this. One, okay, this is the version where, yeah, the Kondi Nast union is structurally dependent on the existence of Kondi Nast and And this means that the power of the union is based on its ability to bring people back to work.

However, there is the second one. You could theoretically have, you could theoretically have the Condé Nast Union without Condé Nast. Where we have C&Ted it, we've taken it over, we're running it now, we are just now the union. And, you know, and the thing I will say about that, and this is always, this has always been the advantage of co-ops is that, like, you are immediately from the ground up, you're going to have a kind of efficiency advantage. because there is not an entire middle layer. Like, because obviously, like, there were, like, producers who do a bunch of work like my boss, Sophie. Like, if we didn't have Sophie, none of this would work, right?

Yeah. There's also a bunch of other people who have the same title who do nothing. And that's not even true. If they did nothing, it would be better. They interfere with everything constantly and get paid an extraordinary, large amount of money to make everything work worse. And you don't have to have that entire, like, bureaucratic layer, like, layer of middle management.

And this has always been the mass of just efficiency. advantage that you have when workers running their own shit is that you don't have to have those people and the coordination that needs to be done okay you have people doing the coordination you don't have 15 layers of dipshits whose job it is to run around making your job harder this is this this this has been me talking about the organizational advantages of anarchy that's great no you're fine um i mean what i will say is like it's an interesting thing about Condé Nast, and, like, a lot of, I think, these media conglomerates is, like, you know, other than, like, when I am a member of the Condi Nast union, like, I don't really interact

with people who work elsewhere at Condi Nast. Like, I interact with the people at my magazine, and, like, the people at Bon Appetit and I, like, generally get along great. I had a really, really awesome relationship with my manager. I have a lot of admiration for him and what he does. I think he's, like, the same way that you talk about Sophie, I think he's, like, really great at his job. I, like, have a good relationship with our editor-in-chief. I have a lot of respect for her as well. We have a really, really solid system going, where we are able to make this food magazine every month and able to keep this website online and able to make content that we're all, like, you know, recipes and stories that we're all really, really proud of. And then at the same time,

we were kind of subject to this, like, kind of bigger whatever media machine. That's, like, kind of moving around ahead or above us. And also moving around, like, again, but just like so little transparency. Like, yeah. Going back to the action on Wednesday the 5th, we have tried to have meetings with Stan, like the executive that we talked to in the hallway, the executive that we marched on, we have tried to have meetings with him so many times in so many different ways. We have emailed him questions, not gotten responses. We have invited him to like town halls, not gotten responses. We invited him to meet with our diversity committee and labor relations got mad at us for C-Cing him on the email.

Historically, like that kind of level of the company has been extremely averse to interacting with its workers, like, answering basic questions, which is why, like, when you look at, you know, there's a video out there of the interaction, like, this is why we have to march on our bosses like this, because there's literally no other way to get a single answer out of them, because they kind of, I mean, they exist on this other floor of the company altogether. Like, so, I don't know, it's, it's very frustrating. It's frustrating to, like, kind of exist in this, like, dual system of, like, well, we have a magazine that we are operating, like, very effectively on our own.

Yeah. And yet there's this entire thing. above it that is making these decisions about how it ought to function and like what it ought to be doing. Yeah, and you don't know what it does because they're not there. Like, they have absolutely no idea how your production actually functions. I would be surprised if the man who fired me knew what my job was. Yeah, no, absolutely not. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023, when he was finally caught.

The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.

On an all new episode of IHard Radio's Las Culturistas, Emmy, Golden Globe, and Tony Award winner Sarah Paulson's. bills on red carpet hacks we saw these pictures and you're like what is the story with this she gets real about the inspiration behind her roles oh no there is no end to how people will behave and she puts host matt rogers and bow and yag on notice i don't think so honey i feel very very triggered by this open your free iHeart radio app search lost cultureista and listen to the full podcast now on this week's episode of the next chapter i dd jakes get to sit down with Oprah Winfrey, a media mogul philanthropist and global trailblazer.

My life, although it may look like an anomaly, it has only been possible because I was obedient to the calls. This episode dies deep into how Oprah turned pain into purpose and what it really means to evolve with everybody watching. Every decision I have ever made has come from sitting. with the spirit and asking God, what would you have me do first? Whether you're rebuilding, reimagining, or just trying to hold it together, this one will speak directly to you.

Listen to the next chapter on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast, episodes drop weekly. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back. this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and

businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make

something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons.

So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get it, your podcasts. all the old critiques of like the Soviet system were like oh there's just this out of touch bureaucrat

300 miles away making production decisions blah blah blah blah it's like oh yeah no that's actually just like how your job works is some suit in like another building is like oh your jobs are replaceable oh you can you can do this with like 20% less staff oh i don't even know what you do but we're firing you because we hate you specifically like it's just oh terrible way for the world to run. Yeah, totally. And I mean, we have like these models of like what successful workplaces can look like, you know, like places with militant unions that like actually work, like actually give workers a say and what their conditions should be and what their conditions are, places that have like gotten rid of the boss altogether. And like, you know, again, those worker

co-ops that I listed, like, there are these functional models of what the future of media can look like. And this is a thing that I say all the time is like the reason that I'm excited about being a member of the News Guild, the reason I got involved in organizing in the first place is like, I think there is a future of media. Like, I think there is a way that, like, you know, people like you and people like me, like people who write and tell stories and, like, are interested in, like, talking to people and getting their stories out there. I think there are sustainable ways that we can do that.

And I think the people who know how to do, like, the sustainable future of this thing are the people who are making the product in the first place. Yeah. Like, we are the ones with vision. Like, we are the ones who know how to make something that can continue to exist sustainably, something that can, like, even under the capitalist, like, framework, like, something that can make money. something that can be profitable. A lot of the great journalists I know are, like, actually very interested in and very, very good at making work that, like, generates quite a bit of

revenue. And I don't think that's a particularly bad thing. Like, they know how to do this in a way that is sustainable in a way that, like, keeps readers excited and engaged and, like, willing to, like, pitch in in their own ways. The problem is that the people who seem to have that know how, the people who make the thing and the people who know how to keep making the thing and the people who are making the decisions, like, aren't the same people. Yeah. And the way that you fix that divide, like, is by demanding a seat at the table, is by demanding the people who, like, are making those decisions actually do listen to you, and then demanding that they actually follow through on the obligation or the things that they say they're going to do. One of the really frustrating things about my termination is, like, they're saying that I was, like, too aggressive and was harassing the chief people officer. Again, there's a video, I think, is extremely exonerating. Also, oh, wow, the trans women's being too aggressive. Wow. Wow. Never seen that one before. One day they're going to develop a second joke.

Wow. Any day now. No, I know. Actually, one thing, some like Judd on the internet who was like trying to make fun of me said I was wearing a wig. I would like to state for the record, I don't wear a wig. This is my hair. I grew it myself.

It took a while. Thank you. I agree. Although one of my friends told me that I had to have turf fangs the other day, which I really actually, it was the day that I got fired come to think of it. Um, it was before they knew, to be fair, but, um, no, I know. Um, sorry, what was I saying before that? I, I, the last time I got owned that hard was my mom called me a talking head.

So, you know, it happens. Sometimes you get absolutely obliterated, but. Hey, I love that band. Um, but if the company, like, actually believed that I was, you know, being too or, like, committing, I think the words that they used are, like, gross misconduct. Like, I know. We have just caused protections in our contract that include, like, an explicit procedure that you're supposed to go through for gross misconduct.

Like, if the company was following the contract, if they, like, felt the obligation to do so, what should have happened is they shouldn't have let me finish the rest of my workday. Instead, I should have been escorted out of the building by security. I should have been placed on a leave. There should have been an investigation with, like, time for me and the union to comment. and then a decision should have came out. And the entire time that that should have been happening, I should have been paid.

And, like, if that sounds greedy, okay, the company agreed to it. Like, they didn't have to sign the contract, but they did. But this is another, like, concerning trend that we're seeing right now with, like, you know, the gutted NLR and, like, the kind of, you know, shirking of NLR, like, responsibilities from companies. It's, like, companies are, like, straight up gaslighting workers about things that are in the contracts that they agreed to. They are, like, pointing to the contract and saying that it says things,

that it doesn't say, or that it doesn't say things that are like right there for you and clear English right before your eyes. Actually, another time that we tried to talk to Stan this year was, so we are based out of New York predominantly. We have remote workers across the country, although we were told just about everybody at the company to start coming into the New York offices four days a week. There's a section of our contract that says that under a declared state of emergency, workers can stay home. Well, this summer in New York, listeners may remember, we had a really massive, like, terrible heat wave, like temperatures up in the hundreds every day, like going into the subway stations in that week, I remember feeling like I was baking.

During the declared state of emergency, which, again, the contract says workers do not have to come into the office. The company said, we don't care, you have to come into the office. Paraphrasing, those aren't their exact words, but they're not too far off. And again, we said, okay, but the contract says under a declared state of emergency, we don't have to come into the office. and they said you have to come into the office four days a week no exceptions and it is maddening I mean yeah that's life-threatening like oh I mean yeah absolutely and I will say like you know I've been at the company five years that makes me a bit of a long hauler like we have people who have been at the company for like 15 20 years like there are people who are like near retirement age

who standing on a subway platform again it's new york city people aren't really in air-conditioned cars driving to work like there are people for whom like at all ages standing on a subway platform in that kind is a really life-threatening and, like, really dangerous thing to demand people do. Yeah. Which is, like, one of the things that we were thinking about when we, like, fought for that contract language. And, like, one of the things that we were thinking about when we were, like, nearly ready, like, in fact, that we were ready to go on strike and, like, disrupt the Met Gala in May of 2024. Like, that is one of the things that we were thinking about when we drafted that.

And one of the things we were really excited that the company agreed to give us when we won our contract. And so for them to immediately just say, oh, just kidding. Well, oh, well, now if we file a grievance. and might take, like, months to rectify, well, just kidding, those rights that we gave you, they don't exist anymore. Sorry. And again, it is like clear, easy to understand language that they are somehow willing to just say, like, the contract doesn't say what it says. It's interesting because, I mean, you know, there's, like, on the one hand, like, companies have always, like, not followed contracts. And it's always been like, okay, if you want your contract

to do what it says, it does, you have to force them to do it. But on the other hand, like, the thing that it reminds me of is, like, one of the things happened with the Trump administration when I've been talking about them pissing off their base is there's been a bunch of unions that they've just unilaterally been this has said this is national security we don't recognize your contract anymore so for example like the the funny version of is they did this to the prison guard union which is hilarious um it's like yeah i don't know you guys you guys shat in your own bed and now you have to lie in it like i i i don't know what to tell you but like yeah but you know the national government has been doing this to a bunch of unions as they've just been

going totally oh yeah no we we don't have to follow this contract anymore because national security and that's the future that all of these people want to and that they're like, you know, this is part of what they're fighting for. This is part of that fight is that they want to fight where union contracts don't exist and they can just do whatever they want to anyone. I mean, there's also like a clear line you can draw from, say, like, the Reagan era and the like air traffic controller union strike break. And then like the way that from like the federal government unions and like the way

that the federal government treats its unions, that like basically the rest of the American labor movement and rather the management side responses to the American labor movement generally flow. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else that you want to make sure that people know? Well, I mean, in the coming days and weeks, the union is planning a lot to fight back against the company. Hell yeah. That said, one of the things that we know most about media organizations generally is that they are very concerned about public pressure and they are very concerned about public image.

This is like a PR-obsessed industry for better and for worse. So we are hoping that like readers and, you know, fans and followers will, keep the pressure up against Conday Nest to show like employers like them that like we will not stand for this. We have an Action Network petition up right now that we are going to keep collecting signatures for that we hope to deliver to management soon. Depending on when this comes out, I mean, we'll be collecting signatures regardless. And that is also one of the best ways signing on to that. We'll get you updates for other ways that you can, you know, support us from the outside. But otherwise, I mean, we've got a lot of fighting to do. We've got a lot of organizing

to do. I certainly don't think my days at Condonaster over. I expect that, like, however long it takes for the lot of shakeout, like, I hope to be reinstated, as do the other, like, three terminated employees. I also am certain that, like, we will be able to win justice for ourselves and the other people who were, like, illegally retaliatorily disciplined following the action. And I also think that this is nowhere near the last action that Condi Nast Upper Management should expect. Um, if anything like this is just showing us that if we want our contract to be enforced if we want the rights that they said that they would give us we are going to have to keep holding them to account and we are going to have to keep fighting for them trying to figure out whether or not

I can get away with saying you have sown the wind and now you'll reap the whirlwind oh god you have sown the bon appetit and now you will get the I can't finish that I don't know where that goes Yeah, you've sown the bun appet And now you'll get teen votes too You have sown the bun And now you'll get the appetit That doesn't mean anything

That's on anything You know, look It's a struggling time For the whole industry Yeah, and if people want to find you Do you want to be found A And B, if people want to find you Where can they find your work?

Yeah, totally I plan to keep writing and doing journalism for however long I'm allowed to keep doing that. So I'm on basically every website as at Goodbye Alma, including the evil ones, sadly. I also, I co-edit a literary magazine with my friend Joyce. That's called Picnic Magazine. It's very cool.

It's all work by trans contributors. We are predominantly a print-first publication. You can find us at PicnicMag on Instagram. We're also on blue sky. I should have prepared our ad, but I'm sure I can send that to you afterwards. Yeah, we'll put it in the description. And, yeah, we are available in a few bookstores

in big cities across the country. We also have a, you can download our PDF and a pay-what-you-want kind of way. We have a second issue coming soon, although it turns out making a magazine with just two trans women and it's really difficult. So, yeah, check that out.

It's all fiction, criticism, and poetry by trans contributors. And, yeah, follow me at Goodbye Alma online. Yeah. Yeah. If you want actual news that's fit to print, you're going to have to fight for it. Amen to that, sister. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight.

So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. On an all-new episode of IHeartRadios Las Culturistas, Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award winner, Sarah Paulson, spills on red carpet hacks. We saw these pictures and you're like, what is the story with this? She gets real about the inspiration behind her roles. Oh, no, there is no end to how people will behave.

And she puts host Matt Rogers and Bowen-Yag on notice. I don't think so, honey. I feel very, very triggered by this. Open your free IHeart Radio app. Search Las Culturistas and listen to the full podcast now. On this week's episode of the next chapter, I, D.D. Jakes, get to sit down with Oprah Winfrey, a media mogul, philanthropist, and global trailblazer.

I could feel inside myself at four or five years old, looking through the screen on the back porch, that this is not going to be my life. Listen to the next chapter on the I Heart Radio at Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast, episodes drop. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business.

First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline is. The most Texas story ever. Listen to Business History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. Your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast.