The Hachette Workers Coalition is a union consisting of employees across departments, imprints, levels, and locations fighting for better benefits, protections, and rights and increased equity, transparency, and agency at Hachette Book Group.

Non-managerial employees are eligible. Legally, managers are determined by their job duties, not their job title. This means that someone with the word “manager,” “coordinator,” or “director” in their job title could still be eligible to be included in the bargaining unit. If you don’t have the ability to unilaterally hire, fire, or discipline a direct report, then you’re likely not a manager. (And interns don’t count as direct reports!) If you’re unsure of your eligibility or someone else’s, feel free to reach out to us and ask!

We are affiliated with the Washington-Baltimore arm of NewsGuild. NewsGuild is a branch of the AFL-CIO. They represent Verso Books, various branches of the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center, many newspapers and media outlets, teachers, nurses, and postal workers. You can learn more about Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild here.

Many workers across America vote to unionize by becoming part of larger affiliate groups in order to pool their resources into building strong support networks (staffing, legal counsel, strike funds, etc.), which multiplies their power to bargain and win greater benefits and stronger protections. In a way, this is a more equitable model in contrast to how Hachette Book Group operates as a corporate entity, by owning many smaller imprints who do not have the same equal say in their access to services, resources, or bargaining power. 

As your peers and colleagues on the Organizing Committee, we felt that 1) affiliating with WBNG was the strongest choice given their excellent track record of supporting other publishers and media groups and 2) their action history proved that they would prioritize our demands as employees. Being part of NewsGuild will help us at the bargaining table, provide us with counsel that would otherwise be difficult to access (think of how much it might cost for you as an individual to retain a labor lawyer!), and grant us direct support from our unionized siblings across the country. We do not stop being Hachette workers by affiliating with NewsGuild, we become workers with even more power.  

Every union approaches this differently. Our coalition plans to conduct a fact-finding survey that’ll encompass a range of topics: pay increases, minimum salaries, healthcare, remote work flexibility, AI protections, caregiving needs and more. It is crucial for employees to participate in this phase, as it’ll be the basis for how the bargaining committee (an elected group of your peers) forms proposals that encompass what matters most to us. Keep an eye on your inbox!

Additionally, employees can join an article committee. These committees, composed of you and your coworkers, will be tasked with helping craft the language of contract articles, and will be divided by the different sections of our contract, like remote work benefits, health insurance, and more. These committees will be instrumental in establishing what the bargaining committee asks for at the bargaining table.

We employees will be negotiating, as the union. On the union side of the bargaining table will be our bargaining committee made up of HBG workers who you will elect and choose to represent you. (Are you interested in being a part of our bargaining committee or another action committee? Email the organizing committee at info@hachetteworkers.com.) We will be supported (but not led) by our Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild Chief Negotiator Renato Mendoza, who is proud to provide his full name and work track record. Meet Renato and the rest of the WBNG staff here! We will also receive support from the legal counsel of WBNG. We expect that we will be negotiating with members of executive management as well as HBG’s hired legal counsel.

It is not illegal to discuss and negotiate your individual salary with your manager, and you can still negotiate your salary during contract negotiations. Our contract could address salary equity in several ways, and managers can offer individual raises/promotions as long as they exceed our contract baselines. Having contract protections around salary and career pathing will also take pressure off of individuals and could reshape our annual review process so that raises can be fairly distributed, no matter how willing your individual manager is to advocate for you. HBG has consistently said they want our salaries and benefits to remain competitive, and it is highly unlikely we’ll agree to a contract in which that is untrue.

For example, The New York Times Guild contract recognizes that salary increases are purely minimums and won’t prevent individual employees from seeking higher increases to recognize individual merit. Verso Books Union won contractual protections around reviews and promotions. Managers must put in writing specific benchmarks for an employee, and if they’re met, Verso will make every reasonable effort to promote that employee. Other units have won minimum raises and/or raises that must match the increase in cost of living. We could even fight for mandatory promotion timelines in our contract. When we move to contract bargaining, we get to decide how to approach these subjects in our contract and what we want to fight for.

Dues are 1.44% of your annual base salary, and have been a flat rate for decades.

Union members won’t start paying dues until we ratify our collective bargaining agreement is through a majority vote; and you and your coworkers wouldn’t accept a contract that doesn’t account for dues in the annual pay increase. The greater benefits we’ll win will more than cover any dues, and will put more money back in everyone’s pockets.

Union dues pay for staffing, legal counsel, strike funds, and other resources that support us workers. Union workers consistently earn higher wages and better benefits than their nonunion counterparts, and having a well-resourced union is crucial to helping you and your coworkers win better working conditions, including better pay.

The only way dues are raised is if the Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild (WBNG) executive council, which is made up of fellow WBNG union members, votes to increase the percentage.

Your right to organize and participate in a union is legally protected. Here are some of the things that management, by law, cannot do to you:

Threaten: They cannot threaten you with adverse action if you support a union.

Interrogate: Your manager cannot ask you about the union or your union activity.

Promise: They cannot promise you benefits if you vote against a union.

Spy: They cannot spy on your union activities.

Importantly, there is safety—and power—in numbers: The more of us who participate in a union, the harder it is to retaliate against any one of us.

We have talked to union organizers at Verso, Oxford University Press, the Center for Reproductive Rights, HarperCollins, Abrams, and Scholastic Magazine, and more. All have been adamant that unionizing improved relationships between their union-eligible peers at work, gave them better protections on the job, empowered them to voice concerns to management without fear of retaliation, strengthened their benefits, and increased the size of their paychecks.

You can find us at the links below. We’d love to hear from you, and have you on board!

Email: Contact Page

Instagram: @hachetteworkerscoalition

Join an info session: fill out our form

Head over to our Sign a Card! page and follow the instructions. It’s as easy as signing a PDF!

Signing a card means that you want to have a union at Hachette!

While signing a card is anonymous to HBG, your card helps build our union’s strength and momentum because each person who signed a card represents an HBG worker who wants to be part of the union. A large and united union helps us hold HBG accountable for negotiating in good faith and facilitating a fair election.

Signing a card (which requires you to provide a personal email) also helps you stay in the loop on all communications from Hachette Workers Coalition, including our weekly newsletter and invitations for upcoming events.

Every union card is confidential, and the only people who have access to the cards are members of the HWC Organizing Committee, the Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild, and the National Labor Review Board (NLRB).

Hachette Book Group will never see your card. HBG will NOT know who signed. Even when cards are securely reviewed by the NLRB, HBG will not see any cards.

This field is optional because we can get this information during contract negotiations, but it’s helpful to provide anyway because it helps us prepare for bargaining ahead of time by getting a sense of what the current salary situation is and what we might want to get in a contract!

You should put the date that you were originally hired by Workman/Union Square