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The union, first formed in 2019, is set to vote on a provisional deal covering issues of wages, layoffs and forced arbitration on Tuesday.
By Katie Kilkenny
Labor & Media Reporter
NBC News‘ digital editorial staff will be able to delay a recent round of staff cuts and will have new layoff protections under the terms of a long-awaited first contract deal, reached on Thursday.
The provisional three-year pact, announced on Friday, offers union members advance notice of layoffs and preferential treatment for rehire and a minimum of eight weeks of severance if they are cut from the job. The deal was reached just weeks after NBC News laid off dozens of employees, including 20 workers covered by the union, after previous rounds of layoffs in 2023 and 2024.
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If ratified, the deal will cover some 300-odd union members who work on the digital side at NBC News, NBC News NOW and Today as reporters, producers, editors, designers and videographers, among other roles. A ratification vote is currently set for Tuesday.
“We are incredibly excited about this deal,” says Top Story with Tom Llamas segment producer Carlin McCarthy, who is also the first vice chair of the union. “Our members persevered, we took a series of direct actions over the years as we’ve been bargaining this contract and we’re very excited about this deal and look forward to sharing more.”
The pact, reached after more than four years of bargaining, also sets terms on pay rates, enshrining a salary floor of $65,000 for union members by its third year. Pay increases over the course of the contract range per role between 9 and 17 percent. The deal bars the use of forced arbitration in cases involving harassment or discrimination and offers union members renumeration for working long weekdays or on weekends.
This moment has been a long time coming for union members, their effort having begun in 2019 with an organizing drive backed by the NewsGuild of New York. The drive began around the same time that Ronan Farrow’s book Catch and Kill was raising concerns over the internal culture at NBC and alleging that the company had killed his reporting on Harvey Weinstein, which he later brought to The New Yorker. (NBC has denied these claims.) While the union effort was already in an advanced stage by the time Catch and Kill was released, unionizing workers emphasized its reporting during their drive.
A National Labor Relations Board election in December 2019 made the union official, with the majority of workers voting to support organizing. In the intervening years, union workers claimed that management committed violations of labor laws in its handling of layoffs and walked off the job in protest in 2023.
The new deal appears to give the union greater latitude over future staffing changes. “NYGuild members contribute to the reach and value of NBC News every day,” NewsGuild of New York president Susan DeCarava said in a statement on Friday. “I’m glad that NBC is finally recognizing their essential work by agreeing to a contract that enshrines the wages and workplace protections they deserve.”
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