Medium unionizes as organizing spreads from media to tech

In the last decade, modern tech companies were renowned for employee perks like free gourmet meals and nap pods. Today, some workers are taking the stand that open-plan offices and ping pong tables are no replacement for equity and stability.

Employees at Medium announced Thursday that they were forming a union. It will be known as the Medium Workers Union, a chapter of Communications Workers of America.

In its current form, Medium is both a tech company that makes a publishing platform, and an editorial organization that produces several publications on different verticals like tech, science, politics, and more. The union will encompass employees from all parts of the company, including "engineering, editorial, design, product, and other departments," the letter announcing the employees' unionization efforts reads.

Medium's position as a hybrid company positions it well to spread the trend of unionizing from media into tech.

In response to frequent layoffs and restructuring in media, unionizing has become common in newsrooms: Axios reported in 2019 that more than 30 media unions had been formed between 2017 and 2019. (Mashable editorial employees unionized in 2018 with the NewsGuild of New York).

In the tech industry, workers at Big Tech companies and startups alike have been undertaking activism to improve their working conditions in recent years. Those efforts notably kicked off with 2018 worker protests against sexual abuse and other workplace equity issues at Google, and climate justice campaigns among Amazon workers. However, while organizing around issues has become more common in the tech industry, it mostly hasn't extended to fully unionizing.

There are a few exceptions. Kickstarter employees began organizing in 2019, which ruffled management, who fired two organizers (the organizers say as retaliation, but Kickstarter denies that). Employees then voted to form a union in early 2020. At Google in January, 225 employees organized to form the Alphabet Workers Union. Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama are currently voting on whether to unionize. (Amazon's been accused of spying on its European employees' labor organization efforts, but in a statement to Vice, a spokesperson said its internal investigations team was just handling security issues.)

In its announcement, the Medium workers write of some of their reasons for unionizing as a tech-media company in particular.

"We are organizing because both tech and media are at a crossroads, and it is more important than ever that companies in both industries are equitable and supportive of their employees," the letter reads. "This is the age of newsroom buyouts, startups folding, tech companies shifting more jobs to contractors, and the general implosion of independent media. Tech and media companies alike are constantly changing direction, dissolving and reforming, pivoting and refocusing. This often creates business advantages, but it also upends workers’ lives."

That's a story Medium employees know all too well. Founded in 2012, Medium has gone through multiple restructurings and reinventions over its relatively short eight-year lifespan. It began as a publishing platform for users, then launched a magazine with paid writers and editors, and a distribution platform for other publications. Then it shuttered editorial (including mass layoffs), pivoting to its original form as just a publishing platform again. In 2018, it looped back around to the hybrid model.

Medium's current editorial offerings are robust. But so was its original magazine, Matter, before the company's 2017 "meltdown," as Business Insider put it, during which it nixed the publication as a whole.

There's nothing preventing Medium from another pendulum swing in the future. But if there is a next time, Medium employees hope their new union will be there to protect them.