Yesterday, workers at the University of Chicago Press announced a plan to unionize. As Publishers Weekly reported, the UCP Workers Guild would be the first union in the nonprofit publisher’s 130-year history. But they wouldn’t be lonely, in this timeline.
For just last week, we got wind that workers at Hachette Book Group—one of the ultra-powerful “Big Five” publishing houses—have also moved to unionize.
The week before that, a similar effort advanced at Catapult Books. And before that, it was the American Library Association.
All of this is thrilling news for the literary laborer. But we may wonder at the timing. Why so many union drives now?
The first answer shouldn’t shock you. Though the whole world is hurting, wages in publishing have been notoriously stagnant for decades. We’ve been seeing regular discourse cycles about the industry’s low salaries since the 80s—sometime around the end of Tina Brown’s three hour business lunch.
And if The Devil Wears Prada 2 is any kind of morale bellwether for big media, even the ten people with job security are feeling grim about the mouth. Meanwhile, reading is up. Book sales are tentatively up. Indie bookstores, at least, are thriving. The math doesn’t quite math, from the worker perspective.
But what does everyone want?
All three of the nascent collectives cited similar grievances: poor wages, incoherent RTO (return to office) policies, general job precarity, and the presence or threat of AI in the workflow.
Hachette workers also seek pay transparency, increased parental leave, and an expanded DEI policy. And according to their statement, the UCP Workers Guild is “seeking higher and more equitable pay, sustainable staffing across departments, and managerial transparency.”
As for why now?
Via email, the UCP representative Adrienne Meyers told me that this moment finds workers at the end of about a dozen ropes. “There have been talks among workers about how to improve conditions at UCP—and in the publishing industry more broadly—for years and years,” she wrote.
Low pay, heavy workloads, and lack of clear worker protections and advancement opportunities have been common across the industry, but the pandemic really accelerated things, as issues like cost of living and accommodations for disability and caretaking were exacerbated.
Unfortunately, most of these efforts are looking at uphill battles.
The Hachette Workers Coalition announced yesterday that management has declined to recognize their coalition. (“To put it simply, HBG is union busting,” reps put it in an Insta post.) The next step is a general election to reaffirm worker support for the process, with mediation assist from the National Labor Relations Board.
As of this week, the Catapult Workers Collective has also voted to move to an election process. Ballots wil be counted between May 19 and June 2nd. After that, workers will have to see where the chips fall.
Despite the procedural headache, union leaders are undaunted. “Our industry in particular tends to draw folks who care deeply about the work they do, which is so amazing,” said Meyers.
“For exact timing, while there are lots of factors at play, there’s a level of things simply falling together too; the right folks with the right amount of oomf deciding to come together and make a change happen.”
You can support union efforts here, here, here, or here. Meanwhile, memo to management: Gird your loins.