Washington Post tech workers, including those from Arc XP, unionise

A few weeks ago it was reported that Arc XP workers had settled back in at the Washington Post. For some time it was speculated that Arc XP had separated from the paper where it was born to proceed with a sale, but this operation did not come to fruition and the major CMS company promoted by Jeff Bezos has returned home.

The issue is that for a long time there was discontent over the difference in working conditions between the newspaper’s workers at The Washington Post and those at Arc XP, who enjoyed fewer perks than their WaPo counterparts.

This may now come to an end, as the newspaper’s tech employees have announced the formation of their own union. “We are taking this step to build a more equitable, transparent and sustainable future for all of The Post’s tech workers,” they state in their press release.

This union “will tirelessly fight for equity and inclusion, a seat at the table, fair compensation and benefits, job security, just cause protections and flexibility and modern work practices”.

“I want a union that ensures salary transparency and equity, professional development and benefits.” “I want a union that protects our jobs from our executives’ political whims. I want to stand up for my colleagues and myself”, asserts Lisa Gusty, software engineer.

These statements come after successive rounds of layoffs in recent years.

On 23 May a vote was finally held and the union representation was formed by an overwhelming majority amid allegations of aggressive anti-union practices by the newspaper. Now it only remains to work on laying the foundations for what will be the collective bargaining agreement for The Washington Post’s tech workers, which now includes those from Arc XP.

On Reddit some are discussing this issue and hope that this initiative will extend to other Jeff Bezos companies, such as Amazon, a company notorious for not welcoming any attempt at unionisation or improving workers’ conditions.

* Original article written in Spanish, translated with chatGPT and reviewed in English by Jorge Mediavilla.