Union: Law360 Flouts Labor Law and Hoards Profits!!
Outlaw360: Striking Law360 staffers are charging management with failing to bargain in good faith. Photo courtesy of the union.
By Bob Hennelly
Chants of “What do we want? A fair contract! When do we want it? Now!” boomed throughout the concrete canyons around 230 Park Ave. in mid-town this week as 250 members of Law360’s unionized staff hit the bricks in an unfair labor practice strike against their highly profitable employer.
There was outrage in the morning rush hour air as the NewsGuild’s CWA Law360 Union strikers in their red T-shirts blasted LexisNexis management for failing to bargain in good faith since their initial breakthrough contract expired back in December of 2022.
“Throughout bargaining management has repeatedly dismissed the impact of inflation on members as irrelevant to negotiations about wages,” according to the union’s press statement. “All while refusing to agree to the union’s reasonable demands that the company remedy its March 2024 unlawful lay-off of 26 union-represented workers.”
“We are out here today because the Law360 Union—about 250 reporters, editors, news assistants, graphics people and other editorial techs are on strike,” Juan Carlos Rodriguez with the Law360 Union told Work-Bites and WBAI. “We’ve been a profitable company, a profitable journalism newsroom for many years. It’s one of the things we are most proud of. We figured out a model on how to keep a journalism company profitable. We don’t rely on LexisNexis profits to keep us going—in fact—we contribute to them.”
According to Rodriguez, the union’s first contract saw starting pay jump by $10,000 when the starting salary went from $40,000 to $50,000.
“We are currently fighting to raise that minimum level up to what a lot of New York City journalism jobs now start at--$60,000 to $65,000. We are trying to get there for this contract,” Rodriguez said.
Management has also rejected a union health-care plan that would “save both sides money” while refusing to acknowledge the “impact of inflation on wages” as the company “continues to earn record profits,” according to the union.
Union supporters are being urged to not visit the Law360 website nor click on any of the company’s social media links during the strike but instead visit Outlaw360, which is the union’s on-line strike publication.
Scores of strikers and their supporters were on hand to get a high energy pep talk from New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento, himself a member of the Newspaper Guild-CWA.
“We are in this together because we are in fact a family,” Cilento told the mid-town crowd. “A family is a group of people who get together for a lot of different reasons—who care about each other—who support one another, who help one and another—who pick each other up when one of us falls down but most importantly in an instance like this it means If you pick on one of us—you have to deal with all of us.”
The New York State AFL-CIO represents 2.5 million rank and file members that belong to 3,000 public and private sector unions.
“We always express our solidarity with NewsGuild and Law360 workers every time there’s a walkout, and now you’ve been forced out here to get your demands,” said Bandon Mancilla, executive director of UAW Region 9A which turned out along with a strong showing from UAW Region 9.
Law360 Union has a gofundme.com strike fund page.
“In the last ten years, the NewsGuild CWA has been at the forefront of revitalization of labor among young professional workers and that started an organizing campaign aimed particularly at digital newsrooms and other kinds of new media even before efforts like Starbucks and Amazon exploded,” said Joshua Freeman, noted labor historian and distinguished professor emeritus of history at Queens College and the School of Labor and Urban Affairs, at the City University of New York.
LexisNexis did not respond to an email query from WBAI and Work-Bites about the status of the stalled negotiations nor the allegations of what the union maintains are flagrant violations of U.S. labor law.
On it’s online “Culture & Responsibility” web page laying out its “core values” LexisNexis proclaims it rewards achievement and empowers staff “to maximize their potential and contribution. We respect our people and believe in open and honest communication. We behave in an ethical and principled manner.”
LexisNexis is owned by publicly traded RELX, a British based multinational with over $9 billion in global revenue and 36,500 employees. It describes itself as “a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools” for the “benefit of society” and so that medical and legal professionals can improve “the lives of patients” and the promote “the rule of law.”
Back in 2017, Sarah Shaffi with Bookseller reported that RELX CEO Erik Engstrom took home $14.2 million in annual compensation.
According to a glowing profile in Management Today since Engstrom took over in 2009 “the multinational data and analytics group’s shares have delivered a ten-fold return on investment.”