Jonah Peretti, the founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, is a big fan of labor unions—as long as they come nowhere near BuzzFeed. According to BuzzFeed reporter Cora Lewis, Peretti told employees this week that “I don’t think a union is right for BuzzFeed,” citing the fact that BuzzFeed is structured more like a tech startup than a traditional media company and his own belief that unionization would negatively affect the salaries of BuzzFeed’s writers and reporters (in whom the company has invested tens of millions of dollars).

Peretti articulated his view toward a potential BuzzFeed unionization drive at a staff meeting held on August 13 at a bar called Ainsworth Park near Manhattan’s Gramercy Park, in response to a question an employee had anonymously submitted. (Per Lewis, the question was: “Several media outlets have recently unionized, do you consider that an option for BuzzFeed? What’s Jonah’s position on unionization?”) Peretti began by endorsing the “positive impact” labor unions have had in places like factories but later concluded that unions “wouldn’t be very good for employees at BuzzFeed”:

A lot of the best new-economy companies are environments where there’s an alliance between managers and employees. People have shared goals. Benefits and perks and compensation are very competitive, and I feel like that’s the kind of market we’re in. A lot of times when you look at companies that have unionized, the relationship is very different. The relationship is much more adversarial, and you have lawyers negotiating for comp and looking at comparable companies and trying to keep compensation matched with other companies. I think that actually wouldn’t be very good for employees at BuzzFeed — particularly people who are writers and reporters — because the comps for writers and reporters are much less favorable than comps for startup companies and tech companies. In general, I don’t think it’s the right idea for us. The only thing about BuzzFeed is that we’re global, most unions are national. We have people who move between different roles and in general unions do a lot of defining clearly what individual roles, and what the job function is. So for a flexible, dynamic company, it isn’t something I think would be great for the company.

You can read the rest of Peretti’s response at BuzzFeed. If you have any other information about this, please get in touch.