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| Members of the Hachette Workers Coalition | |
Staff at Hachette Book Group have voted 388-130 to unionize with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, and the newly certified Hachette Workers Coalition will begin negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the company, the News Guild said. The union also represents workers at the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Bloomberg, and other companies and organizations.
Hachette is now the second of the Big Five publishers to have a union. A predecessor part of HarperCollins unionized 60 years ago, and some Harper staff are part of that union, affiliated with the UAW. The Hachette Workers Coalition is the largest union in book trade publishing and represents about 600 employees.
Eric Arroyo, a Hachette digital production coordinator and union member, said, "We look forward to meeting management at the bargaining table, and we have every expectation that we can come together in good faith to build a groundbreaking first contract that, by uplifting workers, will allow both Hachette and the wider publishing industry to flourish."
Brenna Haney, a metadata associate in digital sales at Hachette, said, "This is the culmination of years of hard work by employees who came together to fight for better working conditions for ourselves and the publishing industry as a whole. We withstood months of anti-union campaigning from the company, and today, we march forward united, ready to bargain for better benefits, stronger protections, and increased equity, transparency, and agency in our workplace."
In a memo to staff, Hachette Book Group CEO David Shelley said that Hachette will "enter into this new era with hope and in good faith."