Vox Media Fires Hundreds of Freelance Writers, Blaming California's 'Gig Economy' Law

[Professor Emeritus]

People in here seriously caping for billion-dollar companies paying workers a few hundred dollars a month.



Vox Media, Inc. - Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho
SB Nation Writers, Editors Win Class Status in Overtime Suit

On September 1, 2017, Site Manager Cheryl Bradley filed a nationwide collective action lawsuit under the Fair Labor Standards Act on behalf of all Site Managers and Managing Editors of SB Nation websites. Ms. Bradley alleges that she was paid $125 per month to manage SB Nation’s “Mile High Hockey” website, which provides coverage of the Colorado Avalanche.

Judge Advances Class Action by Vox Sports Bloggers

Sports bloggers who earn as little as $3 a post writing for Vox can proceed with a class action against the online news outlet, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

Represented by the law firm Jennings Sigmond, lead plaintiff Cheryl Bradley and other bloggers filed the suit last September against SB Nation, a sports-business subsidiary of the Vox empire.

Accusing Vox of having misclassified them as independent contractors, the workers said Vox violated labor laws requiring it to pay them minimum and overtime wages.

One of the plaintiffs, John Wakefield, earned $50 per month when he started covering the Leeds United Football Club. According to the ruling, he often worked 30 to 40 hours each week, and upwards of 60 hours during peak times, eventually earning $75 per month.

How SB Nation Profits Off An Army Of Exploited Workers

Twelve years ago, SB Nation began as a do-it-yourself venture, by and for fans, more a community of communities than a journalistic endeavor. It has since evolved and rebranded itself and emerged as Vox Media, which was valued at $1 billion in 2015 after a $200 million round of funding from NBCUniversal. The SB Nation network itself, consisting of 319 team websites, has remained in place, a vast operation read by millions of people every month and powered by unpaid and underpaid labor.

These sites are run by managers who are expected to post articles and videos, track and sometimes break news, manage writers, conduct interviews, assign stories, find contributors, edit posts, write analysis, and generally do the work of journalism. These responsibilities can add up to a demanding job—or, in some cases, a close to full-time one—but site managers are independent contractors who are paid a monthly stipend that varies widely. According to more than a dozen former and current site managers I spoke to, that stipend tends to hover around $600. The stipend often doubles as a budget. (Some site managers also receive money, or extra money to pay contributors, based on post-count or page-view metrics.) Site managers at most team sites are free to pay their budget to themselves in its entirety, use it to lure other contributors, split it with or among sub-editors or the site’s most prolific writers, or whatever else they like. Whatever they do, there isn’t much to go around. Many, perhaps even most, contributors do not get paid; no one is paid well. That many people who write for the team sites are not paid is in direct conflict with the SB Nation policy, which, according to company executives, mandates that everyone who contributes to Vox Media in any way must be paid for it. But even the people who do get paid are getting a raw deal. Many put in long hours and receive only token sums for work against which Vox sells ads—a setup that could, according to labor lawyers, conflict with labor laws.

“They tell me every day to do more posts, more on social, more video,” one site manager who makes less than $600 a month said. “Literally every day I feel like I’m not doing enough for my site.”

Ya'all complaints are DEAD. They laid off their fukking "unpaid interns with a coffee stipend" and actually created 20+ real jobs instead.

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

Exactly. Most of those freelancers weren't even coming close to making ends meet with this. This wasn't even 1/10th of an income, this was coffee money for housewives and college kids.




It is still an option. They can still freelance up to 35 pieces a year for each outlet that they work for. That's a LOT of freelance work. If they really are freelancers doing different gigs, and not just psuedoemployees getting slave wages, they'll be fine.

But most of these were just sports bloggers doing a daily low-quality blog with no research for a couple bucks each. They can still blog if they want to, those sort of "opportunities" are virtually never going to translate into anything bigger and if they are good enough to be bigger they can just as easily build the audience from their own site.




At least 12 of the jobs will be full-time jobs, another 10-20 will be part-time.

Those writers were NOT getting $60-100 an article, the one I posted earlier said she was getting a $125 stipend for up to 40 hours of work a month.




You're straight up saying that they're getting paid pennies to flood the internet with the same shyt content you can find on personal blogs, only with the SBNation name attached.

You can always find ab extreme example, if need more widened than a one off. If people are spending 40 hours on such a low ROI freelance gig, then thats on them. If they’re doing it for the pay, it’s clear it’s not paying so they should move on, if it’s for the passion then the # hours doesn’t really matter.

as for where to find content, personal blogs ain’t gaining the amount of traffic they’re getting by being consolidated. In your against shyt that should really be a gig/resume builder/passion, you really gonna fight against the reality of how content aggregation and web traffic work?

 

[DEAD7]

y0 @DEAD7 won't the free market just respond with competitors, to Vox's fragile business model. The superior product will win out.


That invisible hand at work again

Just from another state

 

[DEAD7]

Just read the court case against Vox
This bytch Cheryl voluntarily worked 40 hours a week for $125 a month... Yo

I get it Vox is evil, but yo

 

[Serious]

Just read the court case against Vox
This bytch Cheryl voluntarily worked 40 hours a week for $125 a month... Yo

I get it Vox is evil, but yo

shyt like this is why entry level jobs ask for 5+ years of experience.

It's like how the fukk is that even possible.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Notice as the facts come out the strategy has moved from complaining about all the great jobs that were lost to mocking the people who were actually working for virtually nothing.

Just read the court case against Vox
This bytch Cheryl voluntarily worked 40 hours a week for $125 a month... Yo

I get it Vox is evil, but yo

More disingenuousness, you keep saying people are getting paid plenty until it drops to the point that you mock them for not getting paid.

This is the natural result of your supposed "free market" when the capitalist employers hold all the power. If you reduce opportunity enough you can always find SOMEONE ready to do shyt for nothing. Either they don't need the money, or they believe it's the only way they can advance in the profession, or they are not a primary wageearner and thus are only supplementing someone else's income, or they are just vulnerable and easily manipulated. It's the exact same way that early capitalists used child laborers paid only pennies (because it was "additional income", not primary wage-earners) to ensure a glut and thereby depress wages and increase competition for the adult workers forced to compete for fewer remaining jobs.

Whatever the reason, you use those people to drive wages down and pull jobs away from actual primary wageearners trying to support their families, and when we complain you say, "Hey, it's a free world."

Then we pass laws which eliminate a few of those useless "virtually unpaid intern" positions to create real jobs, and you complain "BUT BUT BUT WHAT ABOUT THE JOBS!!!"

 

[DEAD7]

Notice as the facts come out the strategy has moved from complaining about all the great jobs that were lost to mocking the people who were actually working for virtually nothing.





More disingenuousness, you keep saying people are getting paid plenty until it drops to the point that you mock them for not getting paid.

This is the natural result of your supposed "free market" when the capitalist employers hold all the power. If you reduce opportunity enough you can always find SOMEONE ready to do shyt for nothing. Either they don't need the money, or they believe it's the only way they can advance in the profession, or they are not a primary wageearner and thus are only supplementing someone else's income, or they are just vulnerable and easily manipulated. It's the exact same way that early capitalists used child laborers paid only pennies (because it was "additional income", not primary wage-earners) to ensure a glut and thereby depress wages and increase competition for the adult workers forced to compete for fewer remaining jobs.

Whatever the reason, you use those people to drive wages down and pull jobs away from actual primary wageearners trying to support their families, and when we complain you say, "Hey, it's a free world."

Stop. No one claimed they were great jobs...
This woman voluntarily contracted herself for less than a dollar an hour in 2018 tho
She could have made more donating blood.

… and the 10 full time jobs created aren't supporting anyone in Cali.

I maintain my position... this law is stupid.
Giving people fewer options does not make them better off.
People should be free to sell their labor in any way they see fit as long as they aren't aggressing onto others, and the wealth created should be better taxed and redistributed.

This goes back to what I was saying in the billionaire thread.
Just Tax and redistribute the profits better.
Nothing more is needed.

Remove these regulations, abolish the min wage, let capitalism do what it does best, and redistribute the wealth.
Keep the market as open as possible.

 

[Matt504]

"If people want to allow themselves to be exploited, I don't see the problem"

 

[Professor Emeritus]

@DEAD7, the problem with your "plan" is that it taxes the most exploitative and less exploitative employers equally, while the employees of the worst employers get all the benefits, thereby rewarding exploitative employment and further incentivizing the race to the bottom.

A Walmart paying shyt wages and a Costco paying a better wage are both subjected to your taxes, but then the redistribution goes to the WalMart employee. If the redistribution is weak then the Walmart employee is still screwed, if it is strong then there becomes less and less incentive for Costco to pay fair wages.

I would rather that people are actually paid for their wealth-creating labor BY those who benefit from their wealth-creating labor. If a business pays its employees a living wage and still makes a profit, it shouldn't be forced to subsidize the employees of its competitors who are paying shyt wages. What kind of sense does that make?

 

[DEAD7]

Then we pass laws which eliminate a few of those useless "virtually unpaid intern" positions to create real jobs, and you complain "BUT BUT BUT WHAT ABOUT THE JOBS!!!"

No, im complaining that the state shouldn't further constrict the way individuals can contract their labor(free of coercion/force) and especially shouldn't constrict it in a way that favors large corps who can afford to pay benefits and overtime.
It can dig us further into an employers market where wages can remain low.

 

[DEAD7]

"If people want to allow themselves to be exploited, I don't see the problem"

Let suckers be suckers and effectively redistribute the wealth created by the "exploiter".

 

[Cynic]

I'd think more content to choose from, from varied sources/perspectives surely generates a superior product.

Not necessarily -

H&M and Zara versus LVMH brands
Walmart selection wines versus vintage burgundy
Cookie cutter Trap versus Kendrick albums

 

[Dorian Breh]

So they had 200 "interns" that California employment law judged to be being taken advantage of.


No surprise @DEAD7 in here stuffing straw man arguments with horse manure.

 

[DEAD7]

So they had 200 "interns" that California employment law judged to be being taken advantage of.


No surprise @DEAD7 in here stuffing straw man arguments with horse manure.

Deregulate and redistribute isn't a strawman

 

[DEAD7]

@DEAD7, the problem with your "plan" is that it taxes the most exploitative and less exploitative employers equally, while the employees of the worst employers get all the benefits, thereby rewarding exploitative employment and further incentivizing the race to the bottom.

A Walmart paying shyt wages and a Costco paying a better wage are both subjected to your taxes, but then the redistribution goes to the WalMart employee. If the redistribution is weak then the Walmart employee is still screwed, if it is strong then there becomes less and less incentive for Costco to pay fair wages.

I would rather that people are actually paid for their wealth-creating labor BY those who benefit from their wealth-creating labor. If a business pays its employees a living wage and still makes a profit, it shouldn't be forced to subsidize the employees of its competitors who are paying shyt wages. What kind of sense does that make?

I believe value is too subjective and the global economy too complex for that to be effective long term.
Abolish min wage and other labor restricting regulation, make America competitive across the board, and amorally tax the wealth.

To me, the benefits of greater participation in the workforce outweigh the "unfairness" involved in taxing the few companies that pay a "living wage.