The One Where We Talked About Levels

We’re back with another bargaining update! Our two sessions in February focused largely on economic issues and discussing the abstruse “leveling” system the company uses to determine employee compensation.

In the past, HR has often pointed to one set of company-wide numeric levels (corresponding to specific roles/titles) as the be-all end-all for determining employee pay. But our conversation revealed that individual pay is actually based on the interaction of three different factors, two of which employees aren’t ever told about, and pay for two roles within the same “level” could be wildly different if the employees are on different teams or in different geographic locations. Though management argued they have been transparent about this system, no employee, to our knowledge, has ever been told about or shown the mysterious “back end” pay band grid. So, at the end of the day, the elaborate system really functions to let the company continue to pay each employee whatever they want to.

We’re hard at work on proposals for a clear, transparent, and fair pay structure for our members that will address inequities between teams and individuals, and actually make sense to employees.

Here are some other updates from the bargaining table.

HARASSMENT INVESTIGATIONS: We got the company to agree that employees who make a complaint about harassment or discrimination will be informed once an investigation is over and what action was taken as a result. This is a rare provision to secure in a contract, and we’re very proud to have to come to an agreement on it. Management also agreed that employees called on to participate in investigations as witnesses will have the right to request that a Guild representative be present during investigatory interviews.

REMOTE WORK: The company is still seeking to maintain almost total control over this issue; they’ve rejected our proposal that requests to work remotely, as long as it wouldn’t negatively impact operations, should not be unreasonably denied. 

We’re also still negotiating over criteria for when the company should pay for a remote worker’s travel expenses, where we’ve repeatedly reassured management that we’re not trying to nickel and dime them for subway fare, which seems to be a major concern for them.

OUTSIDE WORK: We proposed a process for how staffers would get approval to do freelance work elsewhere, in the event that it might relate to or compete with someone’s work for BuzzFeed News. We proposed giving the company the right of first refusal, and a right to turn down requests that might present a conflict of interest.

But management rejected this outright. Under their proposal, all outside work — including personal and unpaid work — would be subject to manager’s approval. That includes starting a blog or writing something in an alumni newsletter, even if we weren’t getting paid for it and it had nothing to do with what we covered for BuzzFeed News.

This is antithetical to the spirit of our newsroom. We’re creative people who love to try new things and experiment on social media and other platforms. Instituting a policy like this would stifle what makes this newsroom special, and could drive away talented people with devoted readers — ironic, considering how much the company benefits from our personal brands and followings.

PAID LEAVE: In addition to proposing a total of 24 weeks of paid parental leave — up from the current 18 weeks BuzzFeed offers — we proposed an additional 20 days of what we’re calling “transition time” for the first year of parenthood. We are also recommending getting rid of the (sexist!) “primary” and “secondary” caregiver distinction. Although the company won’t outright say that “secondary” caregiver leave is for men, it appears this policy was designed with straight, cisgender couples in mind. We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to take the full leave and will push to get rid of this retrograde two-tiered system.

We’ve also proposed doing away with the tiered system for bereavement, which currently allows staff to take a range of 1 to 5 days off, based on the “closeness” of the family member who died. Instead, we’ve presented a policy whereby employees can take up to 10 days leave when they lose a loved one — regardless of relationship — and expanded the list of people whose death grants time off to include close friends as well. 

Our paid leave proposal also includes a one-time paid leave of up to three months (aka sabbatical) for employees who’ve worked at BuzzFeed for four years, and memorializes the current company policies on marriage leave and jury duty.

TIME OFF: We’ve proposed significantly higher caps on vacation accrual balances, making the point that especially in our line of work, where the news never stops, we often can’t use our time off. Currently, the company has the two tiers of PTO accrual based on years of service (15 days when you start, and 20 days after 3 years). We’ve put forward a third tier of 25 days per year for employees with six or more years of service, which is in line with most comparable media companies and would help encourage retention of long-time employees.

We have also memorialized the (very good!) new policy that PTO and comp time will be paid out when an employee leaves the company, as well unlimited sick time and the monthly Self Care Day introduced during the pandemic.

Finally, since lots of BuzzFeed News employees celebrate holidays that aren’t on the company’s list of observed holidays, we’ve offered that employees can request to substitute any company named holiday for a different religious holiday AND proposed increasing the number of floating holidays from one to five to be used at any time.