Media

“When Your Owner Is Richer Than God, It’s Easier to Get Uppity”: Discontent at The Washington Post as the Union Targets Jeff Bezos

The new economy’s archetypal disrupter was a dead-tree media hero for saving the paper. But now his journalists want a bigger cut. “Bezos has done amazing things for this place,” says one staffer. “But the disaffection with Silicon Valley monopolies may be coming home to roost.”
jeff bezos
Bezos photographed at Amazon's headquarters in Seattle last year.By Kyle Johnson/The New York Times/Redux.

It’s coming up on five years since Jeff Bezos, who officially became the world’s richest man this week, rescued The Washington Post from a future that looked bleak. The paper was hemorrhaging money and jobs, and its longtime stewards, the Graham family, opted for a safe harbor over existential uncertainty, selling their pride and joy to the polarizing Amazon boss for $250 million in cash. There were risks, of course. What kind of owner would Bezos be? Would he try to use the Post to advance his own interests? Was he committed to investing in the place long-term even if it meant losing a bunch of money in the near-term? Would he transform the journalism business by gutting it?

Big tech's archetypal disrupter has had a huge hand in building the new economy even as he’s laid waste to large swaths of the old one. And Amazon’s fulfillment centers are notorious for their grueling working conditions and questionable compensation. But Bezos (with the help of Donald Trump, of course) is now the shining hero of dead-tree media, the face that all struggling print publications see in their dreams at night. When I talk to people who work at the former Time Inc. titles that Meredith Corporation is currently selling, they tend to say things like, “We’re just looking for our Bezos,” or, as one source put it to me recently, “Everyone looks at The Washington Post under Bezos and is praying for the same.”

In recent days, though, a crack appears to be developing in this cheery facade. “This is the first tangible conflict,” a Post journalist told me, referring to a negotiating impasse that has, quite publicly, pitted a union that represents non-management Post employees against the impossibly wealthy benefactor to whom they owe their publication’s revival. “When Bezos first came, he brought really good vibes,” this person, who is a union member, said. Now, five years in, “People are wanting more of the accoutrements that come with that.” Another staffer said: “Bezos has done amazing things for this place, but the disaffection with Silicon Valley monopolies may be coming home to roost.”

On June 14, the Washington-Baltimore News Guild’s bargaining unit at the Post published a letter to Bezos signed by more than 400 of its members, who have now been working without a contract for 12 months, sparring with Post brass over matters like pay bumps and retirement plans. “We, the undersigned, have been extremely grateful that you stepped in to purchase the Post at a time when the traditional media model was collapsing,” reads the letter, which was accompanied by a two-minute video and a #DearJeffBezos Twitter campaign. “In the past year alone, the Post has doubled the number of digital subscriptions and increased its online traffic by more than half; its advertising team has met or exceeded all its targets. All we are asking for is fairness for each and every employee who contributed to this company’s success: fair wages; fair benefits for retirement, family leave and health care; and a fair amount of job security.”

The Bezos letter traveled far and wide, from Media Twitter, to viral clickbait factories like DailyMail.com, to the frenetic consciousness of the 45th president, whose war on Bezos and the Post was making headlines just a few months earlier. “Washington Post employees want to go on strike because Bezos isn’t paying them enough,” Trump tweeted on June 17. “I think a really long strike would be a great idea. Employees would get more money and we would get rid of Fake News for an extended period of time!” (Our readers won’t be surprised to learn that there actually hasn’t been any talk of a strike.) The campaign also had the effect of engendering sympathy within the journalism community. “The @washingtonpost claims it’s been profitable each of the past two years,” tweeted Dan Kennedy, the journalism professor and media critic. “Time for @JeffBezos to share some of that with his journos.”

Inside the Post, there are those who feel that the focus on Bezos is misguided. While Bezos approves the budget, Post executives, like editor Marty Baron and publisher Fred Ryan, are the ones who determine how that money should be spent. Bezos is not directly involved in contract negotiations, which are led by general counsel Jay Kennedy on the management side. (They resume on Friday.) The extent to which Bezos is engaged with the discussions is unclear. (The Post’s communications department declined to comment for this story, as did Bezos’s main Amazon rep.) Some Post employees would also point out that even though the company is owned by the leader of the 1 percent, it is nonetheless a business whose goal is to be profitable. Baron’s position on this is no secret. “I like that Jeff Bezos doesn’t treat us like a charity,” he said at a media conference last week, “because if he ever got tired of his charity, we’d be in big trouble.” (Baron also declined to comment.)

At the same time, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Bezos’s other company—the one that accounts for the vast majority of his $141 billion net worth—has been criticized for its unfriendliness to unions and allegations of questionable employee treatment, including a damaging New York Times exposé three years ago that portrayed Amazon as pushing even its white-collar workers to the brink. Freddie Kunkle, a veteran staff writer who serves as co-chair of the Post’s bargaining unit, told me he couldn’t help feeling as if the management position was “more driven by ideology than a financial ledger.” The Grahams, Kunkle noted in fairness, “were also pretty tough bargainers. They were not pushovers either. But they were perhaps a bit more paternalistic. When they sold this company, they knew how important the idea was that you might not get paid a whole lot as a journalist, but you don’t have to eat cat food when you retire either.”

Indeed, retirement benefits are one of the main sticking points in the current showdown. When Bezos bought the Post in 2013, the Guild contract that was up for renewal at the time was simply extended for a year. During the Guild’s first bargaining session of the Bezos era in 2015, the traditional pension plan was frozen, ruffling feathers and setting the stage for the current conflict. “The current retirement plans, including a 1 percent match on our 401(k), suggest that you place little value in your employees’ future financial security,” reads the letter to Bezos, which likewise bemoans a proposed $10-a-week pay increase (“shocking from someone who believes democracy dies in darkness”), as well as policies relating to layoffs and severance. Guild members also want a guaranteed yearly cost-of-living increase, as opposed to raises that are based wholly on merit. “I think it’s pretty scary that the cost of living isn’t baked into the pie,” one Guild member told me. (Base salaries for Guild members, to put it in context, are in the general range of around $30,000 for, say, delivery drivers, editorial assistants, and entry-level ad sales reps, to around $56,000 for reporters and anywhere between $90,000 and $150,000 for top-shelf editorial hires; the median salary for all Post employees is $82,000, according to the Guild.)

None of this is particularly noteworthy in the sense that these sorts of battles are a recurring theme at the big U.S. newspaper companies, including the Times and The Wall Street Journal. But the Bezos factor is what makes this one particularly interesting—and particularly fraught. “People’s feelings are just very complicated,” said Kunkle. “It’s fantastic to be at this place because it’s on this upward trajectory, but we also want the people who work here to have good benefits and good pay. We’re thrilled the Post is once again prospering, but we want to make sure everyone is sharing in that.”

Other insiders I spoke with were a bit more blunt. “The newsroom is thriving again, it’s no longer under threat of layoffs, and almost every department has been able to hire people,” said one Post journalist, who is not a Guild member. “There’s a little more energy and headspace to be like, ‘Actually, it would be really nice if we had a better 401(k) match!’ As opposed to, ‘Please don't take away my resources’ or, ‘I can't even buy a plane ticket to go and cover this thing.’” (This person and others noted that the 401(k) stands out like a sore thumb compared to other news organizations with which the Post is competing for talent.)

“It’s awkward,” said a journalist who does belong to the Guild, and who’s been at the Post since before Bezos. “When your owner is richer than God, it’s easier to kind of get uppity that you don’t have a great 401(k) match. When the paper’s hemorrhaging and laying people off, it’s a lot harder. You just have the expectation that you’re gonna lose.”