The Conde Nast Union Busting Purge

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Conde Nast Union Busting Purge

It Could Happen Here – Cool Zone Media/iHeartPodcasts
Date: November 19, 2025
Host: Mia Wong
Guest: Alma Avaye (former Bon Appétit staffer, VP of the Conde Nast Union)

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Main Theme

This episode delves into the recent and dramatic layoffs and retaliatory firings at Conde Nast—specifically at Teen Vogue and other Conde publications—and how these actions constitute union busting and political purges targeting marginalized workers and active union members. Host Mia Wong and guest Alma Avaye break down the events, contextualize the political climate, draw connections to broader media and labor trends, and discuss strategies for pushing back.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Teen Vogue Layoffs & Political Purge

• Timeline of Events:

  • Monday, Nov 3: Two-thirds of Teen Vogue staff laid off, especially targeting culture and politics editors and writers focused on trans rights, progressive culture, and diversity ([03:38], Alma).
  • Many staff were folded under "Vogue" with unclear futures; key progressive coverage areas, such as trans youth, were notably omitted from future editorial focuses.
  • Two days later: second layoff round hits video, copy, and fact-checking teams—unprecedented for two waves to occur in the same week ([05:44], Alma).

• Quote:

  "If they were covering, say, trans rights, trans youth, progressive culture in nearly any way, shape, or form, they were either laid off or ... folded into the larger organization of Vogue."
  (03:58, Alma)

• Massive Loss for Progressives:

  • The layoffs essentially purge vocal trans, queer, and non-white voices from a rare progressive mainstream outlet.

2. Retaliation Against Union Activity

• The “March on the Boss” Incident:

  • After layoffs, union staff (including Alma) held a routine rally and tried to present management with questions—standard union procedure ([07:22], Alma).
  • Management responded by refusing answers, attempting to send workers back to desks, and, shortly after, firing Alma and three union activists with no severance, no notice, and loss of insurance ([11:06], Alma).
  • Additional five staffers placed on unpaid leave.

• Quote:

  "This is the most normal union activity in the entire world ... the most protected category ... so many different laws just broke."
  (18:10–18:47, Mia)

  "When I got the news ... I basically went into shock. This felt extremely tame compared to past union actions that we've done."
  (19:03, Alma)

3. Political & Structural Analysis: Why Is This Happening?

• Re-Segregation & Right-Wing Pressure:

  • The purge disproportionately hit trans, queer, and non-white workers (especially at progressive outlets). This is seen as part of a broader right-leaning media trend—compared with similar moves at CBS and The Washington Post ([17:07, Mia], [25:45, Alma]).
  • Management explicitly told the union shortly before layoffs that they wanted to “avoid the ire of the Trump administration” ([26:56], Alma).

• Quote:

  "Their overt political plan is resegregation ... in order to do resegregation, you fire all of the people who are non-white. You get rid of any trans people..."
  (17:07, Mia)

  "The company does not exactly have the best track record ... around trans issues. So being ... singled out in this way ... is really disappointing."
  (22:51, Alma)

• Corporate Priorities Shifted:

  • Despite evidence that Teen Vogue’s progressive, political coverage drove high traffic and revenue, business decisions align with political expediency and right-wing appeasement ([25:45], Alma; [26:25], Mia).

4. Impact on Media Function & Union Strategies

• Degradation of Actual Media Work:

  • Layoffs leave already thin-staffed publications unable to function properly; management makes uninformed demands (like editors running social themselves) ([06:33], Alma).
  • Disconnect between workers (who know their jobs and audiences) and management (who don’t).

• Worker Power & Co-ops as The Future:

  • Examples given (Hellgate, Defector, 404, etc.) where worker-ownership and flat structure provide stability and sustainability ([31:44], Alma).
  • Worker democracy (via unions or co-ops) is key to a functioning media in the face of hostile ownership.

• Quote:

  "Workplace democracy ... as earned by worker organizations, unions, worker co-ops ... is the thing that's going to keep the media afloat. That is the model that's sustainable in the long run."
  (32:30, Alma)

5. The Legal and Contractual Breakdown

• Union Protections Ignored:

  • Company disregarded contract rights (forbidding union congregation, improperly executing firings), raising grievances and exposing legal vulnerability ([21:00], Alma; [41:00], Alma).
  • Broader trend of companies simply ignoring contracts and daring unions to fight it out in backlogged, under-resourced legal arenas.

• Quote:

  "Companies are straight up gaslighting workers about things that are in the contracts that they agreed to ... saying that it says things it doesn't say or that it doesn't say things that are right there in clear English."
  (41:24, Alma)

• Management Stonewalling:

  • Top execs are unreachable and averse to accountability; Mia and Alma mock executive Stan Duncan’s repeated avoidance ([36:04], Alma).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the escalatory nature of retaliation:

  "This is a massive escalation ... in terms of retaliation ... one of the most egregious examples ... in our union’s history."
  (20:13, Alma)

• On media ownership and propaganda:

  “These people don't want a functioning media. … They’re trying to accumulate raw power and narrative control.”
  (24:42, Mia)

• On solidarity:

  "Who did cover it was ... my union colleagues who jumped in and helped me raise all the money that I needed to get surgery."
  (22:51, Alma)

• On management’s out-of-touchness:

  "I would be surprised if the man who fired me knew what my job was."
  (36:50, Alma)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:04] - Show proper begins; Mia’s introduction, referencing previous episode on layoffs and the metaphor of "stars disappearing in the sky."
• [03:38] - Alma details Teen Vogue purge/timeline.
• [05:35] - Clarifying dates and sequence of layoffs.
• [07:22] - Description of "march on the boss" union activity.
• [11:06] - Alma reveals being terminated along with three colleagues, no severance.
• [17:07] - Discussion on resegregation and broader trend in media layoffs.
• [18:10] - Mia explains how standard and protected the union actions were.
• [19:03] - Alma on shock from being fired for a routine action.
• [22:51] - Alma on reliance on union solidarity for trans healthcare needs.
• [24:06] - Mia and Alma discuss the "decline by design" of progressive publications.
• [26:56] - Management admits trying to avoid Trump admin’s attention.
• [31:44] - Worker co-ops and media democracy as future.
• [36:04] - Stonewalling by management, necessity of direct action.
• [41:24] - Management ignoring explicit contract terms.
• [44:57] - Alma describes public pressure campaign and ongoing fight; call to action.
• [47:13] - Alma shares where to find her work and Picnic Magazine.

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Action Steps & Final Thoughts

How to support:

• The Conde Nast union is organizing public pressure campaigns and legal grievances.
• Action Network Petition: Public signatures encouraged to pressure Conde Nast.
• Follow Alma Avaye (@oodbyalna) and check out Picnic Magazine for work by trans contributors ([47:13], Alma).

Closing Note:

• Alma and Mia stress the importance of fighting for a genuinely free press and of remaining active and in solidarity.
• Mia: "If you want actual news that's fit to print, you're gonna have to fight for it." ([48:17])

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Tone

The conversation is emotionally raw, urgent, and unapologetically radical—combining incisive political critique, lived experience, and a strong labor solidarity perspective. Jokes and personal anecdotes punctuate the analysis, grounding the heavy content in camaraderie and resilience.

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Transcript

[Alma Avaye]

This is an iHeart podcast. I turned off news altogether.

[Mia Wong]

I hate to say it, but I.

[Josh Zieman]

Don'T trust much of anything.

[Alma Avaye]

It's the rage bait.

[Maggie Freeling]

It feels like it's trying to divide people.

[Alma Avaye]

We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.

[Mia Wong]

NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.

[Josh Zieman]

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[Maggie Freeling]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Mia Wong]

America, y' all better wake the hell up.

[Alma Avaye]

Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Maggie Freeling]

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[Mia Wong]

Media welcome to Naked App it here a podcast telling you to rage against the dying of the light. I am your host, Mia Wong and many episodes ago, significantly more tearfully, I I talked about how, you know, watching the trans voices in media get fired and disappear felt like watching the stars disappear in the sky. And today I am here to say do not go gently into that good night him rage against the dying of the light. And with me to rage against the dying of the light and talk about some absolute bullshit is Alma Avaye who is a former staffer at Bon Appetit. And we will be getting into why that's now technically former and the VP of the new Skilled of New York. Alma, welcome to the show.

[Alma Avaye]

Hey Mia, Lovely to be here.

[Mia Wong]

I wish it was under better circumstances. I feel like everyone I talk to, I go, I wish you, I wish you was under better circumstances.

[Alma Avaye]

But you know, yeah, circumstances across the board are kind of trash right now.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, they're really bad. The circumstances. They do be. They do. They do be shit. So these specifically bad circumstances are one, Conde Nast has just obliterated Teen Vogue, which had been one of the few actually very good progressive outlets, Also one of the few outlets that would publish trans people regularly. And it's just gone now. And Alma and three of her colleagues were fired for very productive union activity, being like, hey, what the fuck? In way kinder terms than that. I can say this because it's not my ass in the line, but, yeah. Do you want to talk a bit about what happened?

[Alma Avaye]

Yeah, totally. I mean, to give the company its caveat, technically Teen Vogue still exists. It has just been moved under the broader organization of Vogue. They've now said that its coverage areas will include professional development as well as. Well, there were a couple of other things that they highlighted, but certainly the things that they did not highlight include, say, you know, scathing coverage of the Trump administration or coverage of trans youth and trans healthcare bans for teenagers, coverage of, like, young celebrities of color and so on. But, yeah, anyway, I guess to just go back to the start of the timeline. Last Monday, we at the News Guild and, you know, at the Conde Nast union, which is the union that represents basically every worker or every journalist and video maker at Conde Nast, except for those in the New Yorker. They are in, like, a separate bargaining unit that we see as, like, you know, linked sibling units or linked sibling unions. We do most of our organizing together and our contracts are nearly identical. But anyway, we res. Yeah, I know, right? Union siblings. It's adorable. Yeah, we try to stay close. But anyway, we got word last Monday that about two thirds of the staff of Teen Vogue were being laid off, including a friend of mine and I think former guest on your show, actually, Lex McMenamin, who was the politics editor at Teen Vogue, as well as a few of their culture editors. Basically, if they were covering. I mean, being a little glib here, but if they were covering, say, trans rights, trans youth, progressive culture in nearly any way, shape, or form, they were either laid off or the remaining workers were folded into the larger organization of Vogue. And I think they're still figuring out exactly where they fit into that organization and what youth coverage looks like going forward. So that happened last Monday, which was obviously a massive loss. I sat in on a lot of the Weingarten meetings, going over the exit pack packages for those employees. A lot of, like, really sad and tearful meetings that day.

[Mia Wong]

We should point Out. This is being recorded on Monday the 10th. Last Monday is Monday, November 3rd. Not sure when this is going to come out, but yeah, just to make the timeline clear here.

[Alma Avaye]

Yes, absolutely.

[Mia Wong]

November 3rd.

[Alma Avaye]

Yeah, that was Monday, November 3rd. Yeah, thank you for the correction. And then two days later at the company, we got a notification that there was another round of layoffs. This one hitting, I believe, folks on the video teams and then people on the like copy and fact checking section of the company as well. This was super disruptive. Usually at a company like Conde Nast. Well, the union doesn't have explicit protections for this. And in fact, the company has the right to perform layoffs if they need to for business reasons. Usually when a round of layoffs goes through, there's a period of peace that comes after that there will be a reduction in force. We'll figure out, okay, how are we going to keep doing our jobs now that we have fewer staffers and then if the company needs to reduce the staff again, that will happen a few months, maybe a year in the future. Two rounds of layoffs in the same week had people really, really scared and really stressed out. Because, I mean, for one, there's just the sense of like, oh God, a lot of my co workers are gone. How am I going to be able to keep doing my job? We lost at my magazine, Bon Appetit. We lost our social media media director, the person who was basically running our social accounts. We'd gotten notification from the company that editors were going to be doing their own posting from then on, which is just not how things. Not how things have ever worked before. Not really a thing that they're like, you know, my colleagues are brilliant and many of them are brilliant users of social media, but not really a part of our jobs historically. So we're all pretty confused how we were supposed to actually keep running our magazine. Most of our magazines are already running on pretty reduced staffs in the first place.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Alma Avaye]

So anyway, between that and the kind of obvious political connection that one could draw, or at least that a lot of our members were afraid of. Dean Vogue being this pretty famously radical or at the very least, pretty famously progressive publication doing some really, really hard hitting journalism, there's a really clear line you can draw between all of the Colbert and Jimmy Kibble, but also the CBS stuff with Bari Weiss, like this kind of broader right wing shift in media. You can draw, I think, a direct line between all of that and the shuttering or near shuttering of Teen Vogue. So we did a thing that we basically always do when we're facing an issue like this, whether it's a big reduction in force or just some decision from the upper levels of the management that have all of the workers being like, wait, what? What the fuck did you just do? We had a rally in the cafeteria to go over some of the questions that we all have for management. We created a list of questions that we wanted to ask. And then, and I cannot stress how, like, routine this is for us as a union, we went from the cafeteria, which is on the 35th floor of the World Trade center, down to the executive floor, which is directly below it on the 34th floor of the World Trade Center. And we walked over to the executive offices and said, we have some questions for Stan Duncan, who is the head of the people team at Conde Nast, basically one of the people in charge of either making these decisions of staffing and reduction and then of enforcing those decisions as well. We went down to speak with Stan Duncan, ask him some of our questions. Two other HR employees came out and met us in the hallway. We said we'd like to speak to Stan. We were happy to ask them our questions, but they said they wouldn't be particularly good at answering them or they might not have good answers for us. But Stan, they said, was in a meeting at the time. It just so happened that either Stan's meeting ended right then, or maybe he heard people talking in the hallway and decided to come check it out. Or maybe there wasn't a meeting, but for whatever reason, Stan happened to come out into the hallway at that time. And so we started trying to ask him our questions. Some of those questions included, like, was the closing of Teen Vogue inherently political? But also, how are we going to be able to do our jobs going forward? How are we supposed to, like, keep running these magazines if you're going to keep cutting our jobs? And then also, how are we supposed to keep doing our jobs if we are constantly living in fear of losing them? You know, Stan does not answer any of these questions, of course. Yeah, no, naturally he tells us we're not allowed to congregate in the hallway. This is not true, of course. We what? Well, yeah, I mean, one, this is our workplace. We, I think, are allowed to have conversations in the hallway of our workplace. Two, I mean, if he was saying that we weren't allowed to, say, take part in union activities in the workplace. We have a right under section 7 of the NLRA that says we can do that. Have, like, contract provisions that say the company will not infringe upon our Right to organize and demonstrate in the workplace. So that just wasn't true. And in fact, the union, before everything else happened, already filed a grievance about denying our Section 7 rights to organize in the workplace. God, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yep, yep, yep.

[Alma Avaye]

So anyway, Stan tries to get us to go back to our desks. He walks across the floor, tells us to follow him. We follow him and keep asking questions. He says that we have to go back and do our jobs. We say, we will happily do our jobs if you could just answer our questions. He tells us that we have to go back to our workplaces. We remind him this is our workplace. And anyway, we end up asking him those questions. We follow him back and forth along the hallway. He goes back into his office, closes the door. We all go back to our desks for the rest of the day. I finish up my work and I go home. And then I get notification from the News Guild at 7 that the company has notified them that they are terminating me and three of my colleagues.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ.

[Alma Avaye]

No severance. No ongoing insurance coverage. My insurance expires at the end of the month.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Alma Avaye]

No notice. No investigation. Effective immediately. So as of last Wednesday, I am no longer an employee of Conde Nast. I had been working there for five years. I helped start the Conde Nast union. In the time since I joined there, I was one of the most tenured members of my magazine. Actually, people don't generally stick around there for a long time, but at 27 years old, I was a long hauler, Mia. And, yeah, in the time since then, our union has filed a second grievance. There was the first one over telling us we couldn't congregate. There is now a second one over the retaliatory firings of me and my three colleagues. The company has since put five other people, I believe, on an unpaid leave. In, like, an attempt to discipline more people who took part in the demonstration. Yeah, it's kind of hard to see rhyme or reason in the people that they decided to discipline. So I was speaking quite a bit during the demonstration, as was one of the other people who was terminated. One person asked one question. That was Jake LaHood at Wired. He asked a question towards the beginning which was, what is your definition of congregate? When they told us we can't congregate in the hallway, which I think is a perfectly valid question. And then one person who was terminated, actually, as far as I know, didn't speak at all during the demonstration. He was, however, the vice president of the New Yorker Union, or the vice chair of the New Yorker union and, you know, an organizer that the company was like, very well aware of. And then as for the people who were placed on disciplinary leaves, I mean, I believe some of them actually spoke significantly more than some of the people who were terminated during the demonstration, but were certainly, like historically, at the very least, less visible and less vocal union organizers. So the trend that we're seeing is that the people who spoke up were either people who had been historically very active in the union or in Jake's case, somebody who is doing really, really impressive coverage of the Trump administration and like, really, really hard hitting journalism against like Doge and like the general, like efforts of the right, right now to, you know, I mean, listeners of this podcast know everything that's going on there.

[Mia Wong]

Yep.

[Josh Zieman]

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[Alma Avaye]

All I know is what I've been told. And that to Half Truth is a whole lie.

[Maggie Freeling]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Alma Avaye]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Maggie Freeling]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Mia Wong]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Maggie Freeling]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Mia Wong]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y' all said.

[Maggie Freeling]

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured.

[Alma Avaye]

Gas on her.

[Maggie Freeling]

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[Mia Wong]

America, y' all better wake the hell up.

[Alma Avaye]

Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Maggie Freeling]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley. Feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Josh Zieman]

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[Alma Avaye]

How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

[Josh Zieman]

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[Alma Avaye]

And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.

[Josh Zieman]

Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism.

[Alma Avaye]

We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time, being more able to look people in the eye, not always hide behind a microphone.

[Josh Zieman]

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[Mia Wong]

I'm going to say this and I'm going to adopt the preferred language of these professionals, which is to say that and this is the preferred language of management, is that some people are calling this both a return of resegregation and an obvious anti union political purge. Because it is a bunch of trans people and a bunch of non white people who have been eliminated from Teen Vogue. You know, this is something that you were talking about earlier about drawing the connection between this and cbs. And like, yeah, what did Bari Weiss do when she got into cbs? She fired like every non white person who worked there, right? Because their overt political plan is resegregation. And you know, in order to do resegregation, you fire all of the people who are non white. You get rid of any trans people and you get, I mean, admittedly it's cbs. It's not like they had like a giant like, like, you know, it wasn't like, like a haven of trans politics in the first place. I mean, they had some like, you know, there's people there who are like, cool, but like, it wasn't like, you know, it's. It's not. It wasn't like Teen Vogue, which genuinely had way more trans coverage than, like, any other outlet.

[Alma Avaye]

No, totally.

[Mia Wong]

Like, and I cannot emphasize enough, like, the extent to which this is the most normal union activity in the entire world, into which this is the most protected category in the entire world. And, you know, obviously, a bunch of the bosses and a bunch of, like, the corporations that are doing this shit, like, don't think the NLRA should exist. And, like, is, like, a legally valid thing, but it's still in force right now. And so. Well, mostly. But, like. Like, for. For this. Yeah, still in force. So they're totally.

[Alma Avaye]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Unbelievably, hideously illegal retaliatory firings that are illeg. Like, so many different ways. It's baffling. Like, it's like you need, like, a second law degree to find every single law that just broke.

[Alma Avaye]

Totally. I mean, the thing that I would point out, too, is, like, like you said, this is an extremely common type of union action, like, across the entire labor movement.

[Mia Wong]

Everyone does this.

[Alma Avaye]

Everyone marches on the boss. We also specifically, like, as a union, we've marched on the boss, like, tons of different times. We've marched on Stan multiple times in the past. There was one demonstration where we all marched on Stan during contract bargaining, actually, last year, where we had significantly more people, and I will say being much more confrontational. I remember a large crowd booing him in front of the entire executive floor. And I would say protected union speech. And I would say two to three times as many people present watching in a much more loud and activated and energetic forum. But we've had marches on other executives. We've had marches on editors in Chief in the past. And, I mean, one of the reasons that, like, when I got the news that I was being terminated, I basically went into shock. This felt extremely tame compared to past union actions that we've done. And also, no one has ever been disciplined for taking part in any action like this in the past, let alone terminated. As far as I know. No one's ever been called into a meeting and said, you shouldn't have done that, and we're keeping an eye on you. So this is a massive escalation on the company side in terms of retaliation. And, I mean, that's also what we've heard kind of across the board at the News Guild. I've been in close conversations with our president and with other, like, organizers at the Guild who have said, and this is, you know, our Local union that organizes a bunch of different publications in New York City and kind of in the surrounding area. This is one of the most egregious examples of retaliation that just about anybody I've talked to has seen in our union's history. And there's like pretty, I think, valid concern that like, if a company like Conde Nast is able to get away with this, like other companies within our union are going to like follow suit and take this as their cue. Which is both scary but also has been energizing for a lot of people. We've seen a lot of folks really excited to show up and join our fight and get involved in any way that they can. Hell yeah. The other thing that I would point out based on what you were saying is so Conde Nast has a Queer publication them us, which I think is one of the all time URLs for a queer publication you possibly have.

[Mia Wong]

Very funny.

[Alma Avaye]

So between them and Teen Vogue, you had a lot of the company's trans staffers. They kind of function as sister publications. They sit next to each other, they work closely together. Outside of them, as far as I know, I was the only trans woman implied on Editorial Economy Nest and I am certainly the only trans woman in our union, including at them. Actually, all of the trans woman employees there, to my understanding, are not part of the unit. They are in management positions, which yay representation, but also means that like, I was obviously in this very lonely position, but also this very visible and clearly very vulnerable position where it's incredibly easy to single somebody like me out. I would also say during our contract fight we had a lot of back and forth between me and company management about their coverage under the healthcare plan. Namely they excluded facial feminization surgery, which meant that if you were an employee of Conde Nast and you wanted facial feminization surgery, you were either out of luck or had to find a way to raise about $50,000. Based on a lot of estimates that I've seen.

[Mia Wong]

If you're really lucky and good and you're going to go to Thailand, you can maybe get it for 30k.

[Alma Avaye]

Yeah, right. No, exactly.

[Mia Wong]

Which admittedly the Thailand stuff is cool, but.

[Alma Avaye]

No, totally. I mean it's like all power to you.

[Mia Wong]

It's a lot of fucking money.

[Alma Avaye]

Totally.

[Mia Wong]

So much shit. It sucks so badly.

[Alma Avaye]

Even more if you want to recover in your own home and your own bed. Yeah, actually, and we weren't able to resolve that in the contract. I got FFS this year and to do it I had to go on a New York State place plan.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, no. Jesus Christ.

[Alma Avaye]

I had both plans active at the same time, but I had to get, like, secondary insurance that cost $700 a month in order to get FFS covered.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Alma Avaye]

Yeah. And that still ended up being significantly cheaper.

[Mia Wong]

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

[Alma Avaye]

I mean, and frankly, like, Conde Nast never covered it. Yeah. Who did cover it was like, lots of my union colleagues who jumped in and like, created a GoFundMe for me and like, helped him raise, like, all of the money that I needed to get surgery. And very, very thankful for that. But anyway, point being, the company does not exactly have the best track record when it comes to, and I feel very qualified to say this as the trans woman in the Conde Nast union. The company does not exactly have the best track record in terms of how they have treated us and me specifically around trans issues. So being again, kind of singled out in this way and then being hit with this significant a piece of retaliation, it just feels really telling and also, I mean, really disappointing, frankly. Like, I've, I've been at Conde for. Or I, I keep using the present tense. I'd been at Conde for five years and, you know, I liked my job. I was really good at my job. I hope that they will reverse course and turn this around. But anyway, it's disappointing. It's disappointing that, like, that. That doesn't really seem to mean anything when the rubber hits the road.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. I think there's two ways you can look at it. One is it's like, oh, yeah, of course, the one trans woman in this bargaining unit was like the VP of the union. Because, like, yeah, trans femmes do be organizing. We do do this.

[Alma Avaye]

Ain't that the truth?

[Mia Wong]

But then the second thing, and you were talking about this like, yeah, the magazines are already understaffed and they're just destroying them, you know, and this is something that I can say which is like, this is something we saw from Jeff Bezos, right. When Jeff Bezos sort of like took control of the Washington Post and then gradually sort of purged their staff and like, you know, has this whole thing now about how, oh, we're supposed to be pro free market and pro individual liberties, which does not include trans rights. You know, if you look at what happened to the Washington Post's subscriber count, it's like nothing. It's like the paper is dying. It's effectively just like, it's not, it's not like an actual functional, like, profit making thing anymore. Like, it's just, it's Just the sort of propaganda vanity outlet of a billionaire. And that's, you know, that's probably what's going to happen to CBS is that it's going to just get sort of annihilated, stripped down. Because these people don't want a functioning media. They don't give a shit if these things actually work. Because what they're trying to do right now is accumulate raw, accumulate just raw power and attempt to do raw sort of narrative and media control in order to stay in power. And it's not working because everyone still hates them even though they bought all the newspapers. Everyone is like, these people suck. Like, but this is something we run into with union stuff all the time, which is like, yeah, there are a lot of bosses who would rather their own company be non functional, you know, their workers have any voice in it. And especially now in this political moment in which, oh, hey, look, the fascists are trying to seize control of the media that becomes increasingly more and more an option of just fuck it. We'll just like get handouts from like the tech fascists forever and in exchange for that we'll publish whatever propaganda garbage they want to spit out.

[Alma Avaye]

Yeah, I mean, I would also say like, I am not sure I get bout across the entire company, although I believe it was one of the better traffic stories that Conde Nast all year. But one of the most, certainly one of the most trafficked Teen Vogue stories in this past year was like out of their politics section. It was the Vivian Wilson Elon Musk's trans daughter cover story. Really, really good. An amazing piece of journalism and also a piece that went like super viral and I'm sure made a ton of money for the company. And so one would think, you know, looking at like the trends of the past, that if that was going to inform anything, like the company would actually say like more politics coverage, like more progressive coverage out of Teen Vogue.

[Mia Wong]

Well, and like I remember I don't have the exact numbers on me because I'm a hack and a fraud, but if it wasn't a hack and a fraud, I would have the exact numbers from the coverage of like that the increase in both revenue generation and in like readership that Teen Vogue underwent once they started doing politics stuff under the first Trump administration. And now you're getting rid of that for what are clearly business reasons and are clearly very, very clearly not related to the fact that there is a bunch of, a bunch of political pressure from a bunch of fascists who run the government now.

[Alma Avaye]

Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't have like, perfect insight into, like, what's going on behind closed doors at Conde Nast, but I can't say that we had a diversity committee meeting with our joint union management diversity committee a week before all of this went down. And they told us that they were, you know, paraphrasing here, but management said that they are actively trying to avoid the attention and the ire of the Trump administration, which at the time definitely raised some eyebrows. And I think, like, led to the big response last week of like, oh, by actively avoid the attention of the Trump administration, you meant just like, get rid of the parts of the company that are like, yeah, hostile towards it. And I mean kind of too like the. The good business of progressive coverage. I've covered a lot of beats in my time at Bon Appetit, but there was a period where I was covering the Starbucks Workers United fight pretty closely. A lot of articles about that in my back pocket. Those generally did really well. Actually. One of the first times I faced big right wing backlash online was covering the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light protest, which I used as an opportunity to write about the Coors Light boycotts of the west coast queer worker movement and kind of the birth of the gay labor movement. One of my best trafficked of all time stories I wrote about why the watermelon symbol became such a big kind of rallying cry in Palestine organizing over the past few years. Again, massive traffic winner for the company. But every time we get into these meetings with management or every time we hear about the direction that the company is shifting or coverage is shifting, it always seems away from those kind of hot button issues that there's clearly an appetite for stories about and instead towards, well, whatever it's towards, you know. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And you know, and you can look at this like there's been a whole bunch of. There was a story recently about Dr. Oz, like pivoting his whole thing into doing like a right wing, like, media grift and nobody's watching it. Like the, the average episode of it could happen here absolutely annihilates like, just like, like orders of magnitude better than like. No, I think it was Dr. Phil. Yeah, it was Dr. Phil who just said, look, they're like the same guy. Like, wow, that's okay. That's slightly unfair to Dr. Oz. Well, yeah, Dr. Phil did this, like, did the right wing p. And like, nobody's listening to the show. It's like, no one. This is like one of the most famous people in United States getting annihilated by like me and the tranny crew. Like, it could happen here. Like.

[Alma Avaye]

Oh, wow.

[Mia Wong]

You know, and, yeah, like, there is this, like, massive demand for this stuff as, like, people increasingly realize that, oh, yeah, wait, hold on. We're getting. Every single person, like, in the country is like, almost individually getting screwed over by the Trump administration. He's like, individually micro targeting every single part of his base and pissing them off. Like, there was the whole farmer's soy thing, right? And like, he's like, I guess technically has negotiated soybean sales now, but, like, you know, you can look at, like, so he was fighting this whole war with his entire farming base, and then he immediately turned around from there and went to fight the cattle ranchers. It's like, there's so much appetite for any critique of this because it's so obviously just like malignant and narcissistically violent. And all of these companies that are like, you know, like, this has always been the problem with the free press is that, like, the US does not have a free press. The US Is a capitalist press. And so, you know, you can just buy them or apply enough political pressure and they will fall in line. And that's like, what they're doing here.

[Alma Avaye]

So what you're saying is we need a left wing Joe Rogan.

[Mia Wong]

I'm gonna become the joker.

[Alma Avaye]

Now, of course. I mean, I'll also say I became an organizer in the News Guild for a lot of reasons. Right. Bon Appetit was my first job out of college, and I was really involved covering the dining workers organizing at my undergrad school. So that was definitely my introduction there. But at the same time, when I got into the workplace, I kind of realized that media unions are maybe one of the only things that will keep the media, at least as currently exists, alive until we can come up with some other model that is more sustainable. Because I look at a company like Conde Nast and you have this very well compensated, very large cast of managers and middle managers. And then you have this massive body of people actually producing the magazines, actually doing the work of the journalism and the culture reporting and the video making and so on and so on. And one of those groups is constantly subject to layoffs. One of those groups is constantly being made to, say, work overtime and maybe being told not to bill for as much overtime as they're being made to work. And one of those groups is being extremely well compensated and has seemingly incredible job security.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, all of the resources are being sucked out by a combination of these venture capitalist dipshits at the top. And Then all of these fucking middle management bureaucrats who do nothing.

[Alma Avaye]

And the thing that slows that down is workers having a say in the media, the people who actually can produce the work, being able to say, and these are the circumstances under which the work is going to be produced. I mean, I think it's no surprise that if you look at a publication like Hellgate or Defector or Aftermath and 404 and all of these worker co ops that are popping up kind of across the media ecosystem, they're worker owned and they have this very kind of flat payment structure where everybody is making around the same amount. Everybody has a say in the way that the workplace functions. And these appear, at least to me, to be some of the most stable media organizations that are out there right now. And all that tells me is that workplace democracy, in the truest sense of the word, workplace democracy as it is earned by worker organizations, unions, worker co ops, whatever they might be, is the thing that's going to keep the media afloat. That is the model that is sustainable in the long run. So I think that's one of the reasons that having a strong and active Conde Nast union, though management probably wouldn't agree, at least explicitly, is one of the things that can keep Conde Nast alive for as long as possible. Again, they would probably be loathe to admit this, but an organization like the Conde Nast union can only exist as long as an organization like Conde Nast exists. Their fates are kind of tied to one another.

[Mia Wong]

Well, okay, this is, we're doing the incredibly esoteric via, via union3. There's two versions of looking at this one. Okay, this is the version where, yeah, the Conde Nast union is structurally dependent on the existence of Conde Nast. And this means that the power of the union is, is based on its ability to bring people back to work. However, comma, there is a second one. You could theoretically have, you could theoretically have the Conde Nast union without Conde Nast. Where we have, we have CNT it, we've taken it over, we're running it now. We are just now the union. And you know, and the thing, the thing I will say about that, and this is, this is always, this has always been the advantage of co ops is that like you are immediately from the ground up, you're going to have a kind of efficiency advantage because there is not an entire middle layer. Like, because obviously, like there are like producers who do a bunch of work, like my boss Sophie. Like, if we didn't have Sophie, none of this would work. Right, yeah. There's also a bunch of other people who have the same title who do nothing. And that's not even true. If they did nothing, it would be better. They interfere with everything constantly and get paid an extraordinary large amount of money to make everything work worse. And you don't have to have that entire, like, bureaucratic layer, like, layer of middle management. And this has always been the massive, just efficiency advantage that you have when workers running their own shit is that you don't have to have those people and the coordination that needs to be done. Okay? You have people doing the coordination. You don't have 15 layers of dipshits whose job it is to run around making your job harder. This has been me talking about the organizational advantages of anarchy. It's great. I'm so sorry.

[Alma Avaye]

No, you're fine. I mean, what I will say is, like, it's an interesting thing about Conde Nast and like, a lot of I think these media conglomerates is like, you know, other than, like, when I am a member of the Conde Nast union, like, I don't really interact with people who work elsewhere at Conde Nast. I interact with people at my magazine and, like, the people at Bon Appetit and I generally get along great. I have a really, really awesome relationship with my manager. I have a lot of admiration for him and what he does. I think he's, like, same way that you talk about Sophie. I think he's really great at his job. I have a good relationship with our editor in chief. I have a lot of respect for her as well. We have a really, really solid system going where we are able to make this food magazine every month and able to keep this website online and able to make content that we're all like, recipes and stories that we're all really, really proud of. And then at the same time, we are kind of subject to this kind of bigger, whatever media machine that's kind of moving around or above us and also moving around again with just so little transparency. Going back to the action on Wednesday the 5th, we have tried to have meetings with Stan, like, the executive that we talked to in the hallway, the executive that we marched on. We have tried to have meetings with him so many times in so many different ways. We have emailed him questions, not gotten responses. We have invited him to town halls, not gotten responses. We invited him to meet with our diversity committee, and labor relations got mad at us for CCing him on the email.

[Mia Wong]

God.

[Alma Avaye]

Historically, that kind of level of the company has been extremely averse to interacting with its workers to answering basic questions. Which is why when you look at, there's a video out there of the interaction. This is why we have to march on our bosses like this. Because there's literally no other way to get a single answer out of them. Because they kind of. I mean, they exist on this other floor of the company altogether. So I don't know, it's very frustrating. It's frustrating to kind of exist in this dual system of like, well, we have a magazine that we are operating very effectively on our own, and yet there's this entire thing above it that is making these decisions about how it ought to function and what it ought to be doing.

[Mia Wong]

And you don't know what it does because they're not there. Like, they have absolutely no idea how your production actually functions.

[Alma Avaye]

I would be surprised if the man who fired me knew what my job was.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, no, absolutely not. All the old critiques of like the Soviet system were like, oh, there's just this out of touch, bureaucratic, 300 miles away, making production decisions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, oh, yeah, no, that's actually just like how your job works is some suit in like another building is like, oh, your jobs are all replaceable. Oh, you can, you can do this with like 20% less staff. Oh, I don't even know what you do. But we're firing you because we hate you specifically. Like, it's just terrible way for the world to run.

[Alma Avaye]

Yeah, totally. And I mean, we have like these models of like, what successful workplaces can look like, you know, like places with militant unions that actually give workers a say in what their conditions should be and what their conditions are. Places that have gotten rid of the boss altogether. And again, those worker co ops that I listed, there are these functional models of what the future of media can look like. And this is a thing that I say all the time. The reason that I'm excited about being a member of the News Guild, the reason I got involved in organizing in the first place, is I think there is a future of media. I think there is a way that people like you and people like me, people who write and tell stories and are interested in talking to people and getting their stories out there, I think there are sustainable ways that we can do that. And I think the people who know how to do the sustainable future of this thing are the people who are making the product in the first place. We are the ones with vision. We are the ones who know how to make something that can continue to exist sustainably. Something that can, even under the capitalist framework, something that can make money, something that can be profitable. A lot of the great journalists I know are actually very interested in and very, very good at making work that generates quite a bit of revenue. And I don't think that's a particularly bad thing. They know how to do this in a way that is sustainable, in a way that keeps readers excited and engaged and willing to pitch in in their own ways. The problem is that the people who seem to have that know how. The people who make the thing and the people who know how to keep making the thing and the people who are making the decisions aren't the same people. And the way that you fix that divide is by demanding a seat at the table, is by demanding the people who are making those decisions actually do listen to you, and then demanding that they actually follow through on the obligation or the things that they say they're going to do. One of the really frustrating things about my termination is like they're saying that I was too aggressive and was harassing the chief people officer. Again, there's a video I think is extremely exonerating also.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, wow. The trans woman's being too aggressive. Wow.

[Alma Avaye]

Wow. Never seen that one. Crazy.

[Mia Wong]

One day they're going to develop a second joke. Wow. Any day now.

[Alma Avaye]

Oh, I know. Actually, one thing. Some CHUD on the Internet who was trying to make fun of me said I was wearing a wig. I would like to state for the record, I don't wear a wig. This is my hair. I grew it myself. It took a while. Thank you. I agree. Although one of my friends told me that I have turf bangs the other day, which I really. Actually, it was the day that I got fired. Come to think of it, it's before they knew to be fair. But. No, I know. Sorry. What was I saying before that?

[Mia Wong]

I. The last time I got owned that hard was my mom called me a talking head. So, you know, it happens sometimes you get absolutely obliterated.

[Alma Avaye]

But hey, I love that band. But if the company actually believed that I was being too aggressive or committing, I think the words that they used are gross misconduct. I know we have just cause protections in our contract that include an explicit procedure that you're supposed to go through for gross misconduct. If the company was following the contract, if they felt the obligation to do so, what should have happened is they shouldn't have let me finish the rest of my workday. Instead, I should have been escorted out of the building by security. I should have been placed on a leave. There should have Been an investigation with time for me and the union to comment. And then a decision should have came out. And the entire time that that should have been happening, I should have been paid. And like, if that sounds greedy, okay, the company agreed to it. Like, they didn't have to sign the contract, but they did. But this is another, like, concerning trend that we're seeing right now with like, you know, the gutted NLRB and like the kind of, you know, shirking of NLRA responsibilities from companies is like companies are straight up gaslighting workers about things that are in the contracts that they agreed to. They are pointing to the contract and saying that it says things that it doesn't say or that it doesn't say things that are right there for you and clear English right before your eyes. Actually, another time that we tried to talk to Stan this year was. So we are based out of New York, predominantly, we have remote workers across the country, although we were told just about everybody at the company to start coming into the New York offices four days a week. There's a section of our contract that says that under a declared state of emergency, workers can stay home. Well, this summer in New York, listeners may remember we had a really massive, like terrible heat wave. Like temperatures up in the hundreds every day, like going into the subway stations. And that week I remember feeling like I was baking during the declared state of emergency, which again, the contract says workers do not have to come into the office. The company said, we don't care, you have to come into the office. Paraphrasing, those aren't their exact words, but they're not too far off. And again, we said, okay, but the contract says under a declared state of emergency, we don't have to come into the office. And they said, you have to come into the office four days a week, no exceptions. And it is maddening.

[Mia Wong]

I mean, yeah, that's life threatening.

[Alma Avaye]

Oh, I mean, absolutely. And I will say I've been at the company five years. That makes me a bit of a long hauler. We have people who have been at the company for 15, 20 years. There are people who are near retirement age who standing on a subway platform, again, it's New York City. People aren't really in air conditioned cars driving to work. There are people for whom at all ages standing on a subway platform in that kind of heat is a really life threatening and really dangerous thing to demand people do. Which is one of the things that we were thinking about when we fought for that contract language. And one of the things that we were thinking about when we were nearly ready, in fact, that we were ready to go on strike and disrupt the Met Gala in May of 2024. That is one of the things that we were thinking about when we drafted that. And one of the things we were really excited that the company agreed to give us when we won our contract. And so for them to immediately just say, oh, just kidding. Well, oh, well, now if we file a grievance, it might take months to rectify. Well, just kidding. Those rights that we gave you, they don't exist anymore. Sorry. And again, it is clear. Yeah. Easy to understand language. That they are somehow willing to just say, like, the contract doesn't say what it says. It's.

[Mia Wong]

It's interesting because, I mean, you know, there's like, on the one hand, like, companies have always, like, not followed contracts and it's always been like, okay, if you want your contract to do what it says it does, you have to force them to do it. But on the other hand, like, the thing that it reminds me of is like, one of the things that happened with the Trump administration when I've been talking about them pissing off their base is there's been a bunch of unions that they've just unilaterally been, this has said, this is national security. We don't recognize your contract anymore. So, for example, like, the, the funny version of it is they did this at the prison guard union, which is hilarious. It's like, yeah, I don't know, you guys, you guys shat in your own bed now you have to lie in it. Like, I don't know what to tell you. But like, yeah, but like, you know, the national government has been doing this to a bunch of unions because they've just been going totally, oh, yeah, no, we don't have to follow this contract anymore because national security. And that's the future that all of these people want and that they're like, you know, this is part of what they're fighting for. This is part of that fight, is that they want to fight where union contracts don't exist and they can just do whatever they want to anyone.

[Alma Avaye]

I mean, there's also a clear line you can draw from, say, the Reagan era and the air traffic controller union strike break. And then the way that from the federal government unions and the way that the federal government treats its unions, that basically the rest of the American labor movement and rather the management side responses to the American labor movement generally flow.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. Is there anything else that you want to make sure that people know?

[Alma Avaye]

Well, I mean, in the coming days and weeks, the union is planning a lot to fight back against the company. Oh, yeah. That said, one of the things that we know most about media organizations generally is that they are very concerned about public pressure and they are very concerned about public image. This is like a PR obsessed industry, for better and for worse. So we are hoping that readers and fans and followers will keep the pressure up against Conde Nast to show employers like them that we will not stand for this. We have an action network petition up right now that we are going to keep collecting signatures for that we hope to deliver to management soon. Depending on when this comes out. We'll be collecting signatures regardless. And that is also one of the best ways signing onto that. We'll get you updates for other ways that you can support us from the outside. But otherwise, I mean, we've got a lot of fighting to do. We've got a lot of organizing to do. I certainly don't think my days at Conde Nast are over. I expect that however long it takes for the law to shake out, I hope to be reinstated, as do the other three terminated employees. I also am certain that we will be able to win justice for ourselves and the other people who were illegally retaliatorily disciplined following the action. And I also think that this is nowhere near the last action that Conde Nassau management should expect. If anything, this is just showing us that if we want our contract to be enforced, if we want the rights that they said that they would give us, we are going to have to keep holding them to account and we are going to have to keep fighting for them.

[Mia Wong]

Trying to figure out whether or not I can get away with saying, you have sown the wind and now you'll reap the whirlwind.

[Alma Avaye]

Oh, God. You have sewn the Bon Appetit and now you will get the. I can't finish that. I don't know where that goes.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, you've sewed the Bon Appetit. Now you'll get Teen Vogue too.

[Alma Avaye]

You have sewn the bond and now you'll get the appetite. That doesn't mean anything. That's not anything.

[Mia Wong]

You know, look, it's a struggling time for the whole industry. We'll be fine. Yeah. And if people want to find you, do you want to be found? A and B? If people want to find you, where can they find your work?

[Alma Avaye]

Yeah, totally. I plan to keep writing and doing journalism for however long I am allowed to keep doing that. So I'm on basically every website as oodbyalna. Including the evil ones, sadly. I also, I co edit a literary magazine with my friend Joyce that's called Picnic Magazine. It's very cool. It's all work by trans contributors. We are predominantly a print first publication. You can find us icnicmag on Instagram. We're also on bluesky. I should have prepared our at, but I'm sure I can send that to you afterwards.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, well, we'll put it in the.

[Alma Avaye]

Description and yeah, we are available in a few bookstores in big cities across the country. We also have a you can download our PDF in a pay what you want kind of way. We have a second issue coming soon. Although turns out making a magazine with just two trans women is really difficult. So yeah, check that out. It's all fiction, criticism and poetry by trans contributors. And yeah. Follow me. Oodby Alma Online.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. And if you want actual news that's fit to print, you're gonna have to fight for it.

[Alma Avaye]

Amen to that. S.

[Maggie Freeling]

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

[Alma Avaye]

This is an iHeart podcast.