Law360 staff pledge strike if contract demands aren't met

Editorial staff at Law360 say they’ll begin an open-ended strike next month unless concrete progress is made at the bargaining table and management addresses what the workers allege are unfair labor practices. 

Staff at the legal news website's last collective bargaining agreement expired on Dec. 31, 2022 and members say that bargaining has proceeded at a glacial pace for the last year and a half.  

Hailey Konnath, the unit chair for the roughly 250 unionized Law360 workers, said that bargaining has been far more of a challenge this time around than for the previous contract and that management has been brazenly breaking labor law. 

“It's been very frustrating to say the least,” she said on Monday. “The company has not been willing to negotiate in good faith." 

The workers’ union, The NewsGuild of New York, has filed four unfair labor practice charges this contract cycle, including one accusing management of bad faith bargaining. Others allege that management unilaterally altered workers’ health-care plans, terminated one union member unfairly and refused to negotiate over planned layoffs that eventually occurred in March. 

Those layoffs affected 10 percent of the publication's editorial staff — 26 members of the union — and were announced on the same day that LexisNexis, Law360’s parent company, announced record revenue growth, Konnath pointed out. At about the same time, the union called for a strike authorization vote and 96 percent who cast ballots approved a strike.  

Members had already held a one-day walkout in December to call attention to their claims of bad-faith bargaining. The workers held another walkout in March and participated in sporadic lunchtime protests since then.  

Konnath, a breaking-news reporter based in Los Angeles, said that the previous actions and the strike authorization vote show that the union is strong and active.  

"Everybody has each other's backs," she said. “The [strike authorization] vote certainly shows that the entire newsroom is frustrated with how bargaining has been going and will not stand for management's tactics.” 

'Whatever it takes'

Workers at Law360 joined the NewsGuild in 2016 and settled their first contract with management in 2018. That deal included just-cause protections, improved health-care benefits and annual raises. 

Management is now trying to “claw back” some of the benefits and wage provisions in a successor agreement, said Drashti Mehta, a news editor and the union’s secretary. “They’re trying to increase our health-care costs while not giving us wages that would help us pay for our health-care costs,” she said. 

Mehta said management has proposed scrapping the yearly wage increases provided in the current contract and replacing them with merit-based raises instead. They also want to weaken the job security and just cause protections that are present in the current contract, she said.

Workers are seeking improved parental leave benefits in the current contract. The current contract gives workers six weeks of time off and management has proposed raising it to nine, but Konnath says it should be higher to meet “industry standards.” 

LexisNexis did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the workers' claims or their strike threat.

Susan DeCarava, president of The NewsGuild of New York, said in a statement that the Law360 workers have demonstrated the value of their labor.  

“We are sick of their unlawful actions and ready to collectively fight and win a fair contract with good raises and affordable health care from a company that has seen record profits, thanks to our labor,” she said. “Unless management agrees to remedy its [unfair labor practices] and changes its tune at the bargaining table, a strike is inevitable.”  

Workers, though, hope that the strike threat will kick start negotiations. They cited progress following the strike authorization vote and the two sides have met many times throughout the summer, but Mehta said that she still feels as though management isn’t taking workers’ threats seriously enough. 

“The unit is ready to do whatever it takes at this point,” she said. “If a strike is what it takes, if an open-ended unfair labor practice strike is what we need to do, then that’s a step the unit is willing to take."  

Konnath added that members have tired of management’s stalling at the bargaining table. “We have to show the company that we're serious,” she said. “We're not messing around."