Walkouts are a common form of protest used by employees to draw attention to workplace grievances and push for change. At NBC, it appears that employees feel that the company may have violated the law in some way.
According to Fox News Digital, about 200 employees from NBC and MSNBC walked out Thursday in response to recent layoffs. The layoffs affected the digital news team. Union leaders said the company broke the law.
The NBC News Guild is a union representing employees at NBC News, including journalists, editors, producers, technical staff, and others. The union is a part of the NewsGuild-CWA, a larger labor union representing journalists and other media workers across the United States and Canada.
“NBC is refusing to bargain with our union, as they have a legal obligation to do so,” Tate James, an NBC News video editor who serves as Guild chair, told the website. “They are acting as if we are not a union, they are acting as if the union does not exist, but we do. We’re here, and they have a legal obligation to bargain with us before they make changes to our workplace.”
The walkout is a form of labor strike which is used to put pressure on MSNBC to make changes or in this case, reinstate terminated journalists. Many believe, by temporarily stopping work, the workers aimed to disrupt normal operations and bring attention to their cause.
“The company has illegally fired a set of workers, they laid them off,” said New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “When you’re bargaining with your union, you can’t just fire or lay off workers, you’ve got to do it at the bargaining table.”
