The Onion Staffers Threaten Strike Ahead of Contract Talks Deadline

Creative staffers at , The A.V. Club and Deadspin are threatening a strike if no new contract deal is reached by their current pact’s expiration date on January 31. A strike pledge signed by 97 percent of unionized staffers at Onion Inc. was submitted to parent company G/O Media in a bargaining session on Thursday.

“I stand with my colleagues and I will vote yes in a strike vote, if my bargaining team calls for a strike. Our No Strike clause in our contract expires on January 31, 2024 at midnight,” the statement read. “We are prepared to strike.” The union, which is comprised of 34 creative workers at The Onion, Onion Labs, The A.V.

Club, Deadspin and The Takeout, is aligned with the East. G/O Media and the union have been negotiating a second contract since Nov. 20, 2023. Issues on the table this time around include wages and raises, benefits and regulation on the use of AI at the company, according to the union. “This strike pledge reflects the mandate from our members to address several pressing workplace issues, especially the need for fair pay and AI protections,” The Takeout managing editor and union bargaining committee member Marnie Shure said in a statement.

“Employees of G/O Media deserve salaries that keep pace with the rising cost of living, and we require assurance that AI generated content will not jeopardize our employment now or in the future.” Experiments with AI, in particular, have sparked a firestorm at G/O Media in the last few months. In June, then G/O Media editorial director Merrill Brown announced that the company was beginning to work on “AI initiatives.” (Brown has since left the company.) That day, two WGA East aligned unions at G/O Media — both the Onion, Inc.

Union and GMG Union — said in a statement that they were “appalled” by the push. “Our newsrooms have spent decades building trust with audiences — introducing computer generated garbage undermines our ability to do our jobs, erodes trust in us as journalists, damages our brands, and threatens our jobs,” the unions continued.

Not long after, G/O properties Gizmodo, The A.V. Club, Deadspin and The Takeout published A.I. produced stories that at those publications, according to in . Now, the Onion, Inc. union is posing a potential work stoppage as its staffers seek to enshrine AI protections in their latest contract. “The Guild will fight to ensure they get a fair contract that addresses existential issues around successorship and AI, the latter of which is critical given G/O Media has already moved forward with using AI to replace workers and posting factually inaccurate articles,” said WGA East vice president of online media Sara David in a statement.

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