Vox Media staffers are seeking to unionize their newsrooms.

Many digital media newsrooms have unionized in recent years, in hopes that a union can serve as a bulwark against industry turbulence.



Editorial and video employees at the Vox Media network of websites made their unionization efforts public on Friday.

Three sources familiar with the unionization efforts, all of whom asked to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of the discussions, told Business Insider that organizers at the Vox Media network — which includes the sites The Verge, Vox, SBNation, Eater, Polygon, Racked, Curbed, and Recode — told Business Insider that organizers alerted management and staff this morning about a union drive effort that has been ongoing in private for months.

In a letter, organizers said the goals of the union were to increase transparency and diversity, protect benefits in the case of future acquisitions, and ensure consistency in "titles, salaries, raises, and benefits."

"A Vox Media union will give us the means to maintain everything we love about working for this company, and to have a collective voice when we address anything that may change," the letter said. "We look forward to bringing Vox Media employees together as an organized unit, and bringing that unit closer to management at the bargaining table and beyond."

Though Vox is known for the left-leaning politics of some of its authors, Vox Media has faced criticism in recent months over some of its employment practices.

In August, Deadspin detailed how Vox Media's sports site, SBNation, often paid managers of its fan networks relatively measly wages as contractors.

Over the past several years, employees at many major newsrooms like Vice and HuffPost have opted to unionize. Last month, employees at The Los Angeles Times announced they were attempting to form a union with the help of NewsGuild in order to secure higher pay, better benefits, and protections against changes by their parent company, Tronc.

Vox Media's unionization efforts come just two weeks after the local website networks Gothamist and DNAinfo were shut down after their editorial employees voted to unionize.