Condé Nast Reaches Deal With Union, Averting Picket Line at Met Gala
After more than a year of talks, Condé Nast management inked an employment pact with hundreds of union workers at Vogue and other publications — heading off a strike that threatened to disrupt the company’s splashy Met Gala on Monday.
The two sides reached an agreement on the terms of a new contract in the early-morning hours Monday. Condé Union leaders had explicitly threatened to stage a picket line at the 2024 Met Gala, the annual fashion fundraiser led Anna Wintour, Vogue’s editorial director and chief content officer of Condé Nast, May 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That would have presented the prospect of celebrities having to cross the picket line to get into the event. “We’re doing whatever it takes: Meet us at the table or meet us at the Met on Monday,” the union said in a post on X Saturday.
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On Monday morning, Condé Union said it had secured a tentative agreement on its first contract with the media and publishing company. “WHEN WE FIGHT, WE WIN: We are excited to announce that we have a tentative agreement with @condenast on our first contract. Our pledge to do ‘whatever it takes’ ahead of the #metgala2024 moved the company and our progress at the bargaining table kicked into high gear,” the union said in a post on X.
According to the union, the contract guarantees a $61,500 starting salary floor; an end to the “two-tier permalance system,” expanded bereavement leave, two more weeks of family leave (for 14 weeks total) and $3.3 million in total wage increases.
Condé Nast chief people officer Stan Duncan sent an email at about 3:30 a.m. ET to company staff about the tentative agreement with the union. “We are happy to have a contract that reflects and supports our core values — our content and journalism; our commitment to diversity and professional development; our industry-leading hiring practices and our competitive wages and benefits,” Duncan wrote. “We look forward to the ratification of the contract by its members.”
A picket line with placard-waving workers on strike in front of the Met Gala — Condé Nast’s highest-profile event of the year — would have been the culmination of months of tension between the union and company management. In January, actor Anne Hathaway abruptly walked out of a Vanity Fair photo shoot in solidarity with a work stoppage by the Condé Nast Union timed for the announcement of the 2024 Oscars nominations.
The Condé Nast Union, affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York, represents about 540 editorial workers at Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour. GQ, Allure, Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler, Epicurious, Self, Teen Vogue, them, and Condé Nast Entertainment. Condé Nast workers at the New Yorker, Wired and Ars Technica are also unionized with the NewsGuild of New York.
In recent weeks, the Condé Union had also singled out Wintour, posting signs around her neighborhood that said “Anna Wears Prada, Workers Get Nada.” In a post on its site, the union said, “While Anna Wintour, Vogue editor in chief, mingles with fellow millionaires at the Met Gala, Condé Nast is refusing to settle a fair contract — and is trying to lay off nearly 100 Condé Union members.”
Wintour also raised eyebrows recently when she reportedly left her trademark sunglasses on the entire time she met with the staff of Pitchfork to inform them of layoffs at the music site, which Condé folded under the oversight of GQ.
Pictured above: Anna Wintour and Bill Nighy at the 2023 Met Gala
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