Vice UK has become one of the first British digital media publications to unionise, with staff urging other online-only media outlets to follow their lead while the industry is in turmoil amid financial struggles and job cuts.
Bosses at the youth-focused publication decided to voluntarily recognise their staff’s right to form a negotiating unit, following four months of discussions involving employees and the National Union of Journalists.
Ruby Lott-Lavigna, a vice writer who is to be the NUJ’s mother of chapel at the new unit, said: “It’s indicative of a wider change. We want to see repercussions across the new media industry.”
The announcement comes three years after Vice UK bosses headed off a previous attempt to unionise by offering to set up a staff council. At the time the company was accused of engaging in an “old-fashioned union-busting ruse” by the NUJ.
Lott-Lavigna said that while unions had previously struggled to appeal to young workers in the media industry, this attitude had changed. “It’s more relevant than it has been before, given the fragility and low pay.”
The NUJ said they were in talks with other digital-only news outlets to form unions as workers became more aware of the difficulties that the industry was facing, with outlets closing as investment dried up.
The NUJ will now negotiate with Vice UK over an agreement that will allow staff representatives to negotiate pay and conditions on behalf of the approximately 50 editorial and production employees at the company.
Earlier this year, Vice announced it was cutting 10% of its global workforce, amid a brutal industry-wide reckoning for digital media publishers.
Many online publications came to prominence in the early part of this decade by building enormous audiences on social media, attracting hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in the process. But this has generally failed to translate into profits, with Disney recently saying its $400m (£320m) investment in Vice is now essentially worthless.
Many leading online US news outlets including Vox and HuffPost have already unionised. BuzzFeed US recently agreed to recognise its union following protracted negotiations, although employees at BuzzFeed UK last year voted to reject unionisation.
