More than 400 current and former BuzzFeed employees are demanding the organization pay recently laid-off employees for unused vacation days.

BuzzFeed laid off 15 percent of its staff last week in an attempt to increase profit margins ahead of a possible merger. The BuzzFeed layoffs came the same week as cuts hit other media giants, including Yahoo, Huffington Post, and Gannett, altogether totaling roughly 1,000 people.

In a letter that was first shared on Medium on Saturday, the BuzzFeed News Staff Council, alongside current and laid-off BuzzFeed employees, wrote that the company is "refusing to pay out earned, accrued, and vested paid time off for almost all US employees who have been laid off.”

“Every aspect of the way that these layoffs have been handled so far — from communication to execution to aftermath — has been deeply upsetting and disturbing,” said the letter, addressed to CEO Jonah Peretti, Human Resources head Lenke Taylor, and BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith. The letter had 419 signatures as of Sunday night.

The letter said “it will take a long time to repair the damage that has been done to our trust in this company. But there’s one thing you can do right now to help the employees who are losing their jobs.” It goes on to demand that BuzzFeed pay roughly 200 people who were laid off for the “time that employees accrued by choosing not to take vacation days, and instead do their work at BuzzFeed.”

In response to the letter, Taylor said the company is “open to re-evaluating this decision.” In a note shared with the Washington Examiner, Taylor stated that “we will follow up soon with next steps so a representative group of employees from across the company can meet with Jonah and me about this.”

The petition letter said many of those affected by the layoffs, particularly those on the breaking news and curation teams “saved up those days (or weeks) because they were so dedicated to their work, and, in some cases, felt actively discouraged from taking time off.”



Shout out to my unused *140 hours* of PTO that won’t be paid out 😣 — whomst is she? (@the_rewm) January 26, 2019

BuzzFeed is paying every laid-off employee 10 weeks pay and benefits through April. The letter demanded further compensation, arguing that all cut employees should receive payouts for any lingering paid time off, including outside of California where it is the law to do so.

The letter acknowledges that BuzzFeed is not legally obligated to pay the remaining employees in other parts of the country, but urged the company which “has always prided itself on treating its employees well” to make “the only justifiable choice.”



If I could get a do over, the one thing I would do differently is actually use my PTO. — Fran Berkman (@FranBerkman) January 26, 2019



The letter concludes by stating that for "many people, paying out PTO will be the difference between whether or not bills and student loans will be paid on time and how their families are supported. It is unconscionable that BuzzFeed could justify doing so for some employees and not others in order to serve the company’s bottom line.”

BuzzFeed's misfortunes come on the heels of a disputed bombshell report it published on President Trump's business dealings in Russia in the run-up to the 2016 election. The report, which claimed that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was instructed by the president to lie to Congress, was labeled "not accurate" by special counsel Robert Mueller's team.