Vice UK staff have moved to form an officially recognised union that will seek to improve issues including the transparency of pay and the lack of job security from short term contracts.
Staff have sent a letter to colleagues trying to get enough support across the company for official recognition by the National Union of Journalists.
The email letter says that the UK office wants to follow in the footsteps of colleagues in the US, who last year unionised with the Writers Guild of America, so staff can “share in the success of the company”.
“We enjoy working at Vice. We appreciate our creative freedom. We also believe organising our workplace is the best way to keep pushing journalistic boundaries while allowing all staff to share in the success of the company,” the email says. “Vice UK staff are incredibly hard working, ambitious and creative and we like working at Vice. We are doing this because we want to continue to make the company a success while also sharing in that success.”
The letter highlights a number of areas that the leaders of the the move to unionise want to address.
There include a “fair and transparent system” for pay and benefits.
“We want pay issues addressed so everyone gets a fair deal, including freelancers,” says the email “We also believe there should be a simple process to regularly negotiate collective pay raises and improvements to benefits.”
Second on the list is job security and the need to retain talented staff and motivate the workforce through “secure contracts”.
“Short-term contracts affect our ability to plan work for the future and job insecurity means we cannot plan finances, housing, or holiday time,” says the email. “We lose talented colleagues as a result of this instability. Other areas of issue include maintaining a “work/life balance” to have reasonable expectations of time off to “recover from a pressurised work environment” and “ensure our mental and physical wellbeing”.
Vice UK staff also have issues with career progression opportunities, calling for a fair and transparent recruitment process.
