Last week more than 250 Guild members at Law360 won a tentative agreement and ended their unfair labor practice strike. They won a five-year deal that lifts wages by an average of 12%, increases family leave to 14 weeks, includes an average $9,000 bonus and ensures strong job protections on artificial intelligence and a lot more.
Members at the legal news service, which are part of The NewsGuild of New York, voted overwhelmingly to ratify the deal Monday afternoon.
I interviewed Emma Cueto, a senior reporter and bargaining committee member, on Monday. When she’s not negotiating with her colleagues she’s covering midsize law firms on the legal industry team. She’s 34, from southern Illinois about 30 minutes outside St. Louis and currently lives in New York.
We talked about Law360’s open-ended strike, what led to it, how they made it so successful and what they won negotiating their second collective bargaining agreement.
Were you always involved with the union?
When I first joined Law360 one of the first actions was to wear stickers that said “union” on them. I remember feeling very vulnerable and weird and everyone can see that I’m wearing a sticker. Seven years later and I’m on a picket line!
When did you join Law360?
I started about six months after the NLRB vote in March of 2017. We at that point had been in bargaining for a couple months [for the first contract]. August of 2016 was the union vote.
I was not really involved in any leadership position for the first contract campaign. I was a big supporter of everything the union was fighting for and as a rank and file member very impressed by people in leadership and being part of an organization that felt very democratic and really was seeing big wins.
They had a strategy and it worked and it was really cool thing to be part of that as a member. And so after the first contract was ratified in December of 2018 they put out a call for volunteers to be shop stewards. I volunteered and got trained and then about six months later. In May of 2019 the unit chair at the time Juan Carlos Rodriguez asked if I wanted to be grievance chair — the person who takes point on contract enforcement. I said yes very enthusiastically. That was about under five and a half years ago.
And you were on the bargaining committee this go around?
The unit chair in 2022 and I agreed that we should both be on the bargaining committee. There was a process of picking other members. And we wanted to make sure we had a representative committee, including different levels of seniority, job descriptions, pay tiers. To make sure it was as broad as possible.
LexisNexis owns Law360, has it always? There was a change in the tenor at the bargaining table this year, right?
We started negotiating in November of 2022.
Lexis has owned Law360 for a while now since before we first unionized. Since our first contract they’ve gotten more hands on. Some things are just as simple as integrating into HR and payroll systems, aligning business process stuff. The executives leading the company since the first contract have been by-and-large people from other LexisNexis business units. Not people necessarily familiar with journalism. This resulted in culture clash, especially during this round of bargaining. Until recently we were the only business unit unionized. MLex now too, which we were very excited to see!
And the company wanted to integrate Law360 into the LexisNexis healthcare in this contract?
That was a big struggle and came out of nowhere.
We had been bargaining for over a year and they’d been telling us for months that they wanted us to introduce a wage proposal and didn’t want to negotiate over other economic items. In February we gave them our wage proposal alongside a strike authorization vote. We got 95% of the unit to vote and 96% voted to strike.
We saw this as the final phase of the contract campaign. And then in the next session the company came back and said they wanted to overhaul the way our health insurance worked.
They wanted to put us into the RELX healthcare marketplace. RELX is the parent company of LexisNexis.
It was a nightmare to vet what this would mean and took us over a month once we finally got the info. They were very slow giving us information and it took us a while to understand both the quality of the insurance coverage and the price. The price varied by which company and level of plan. It went from bronze to platinum. Cost was impacted whether it was employee only, employee plus kids or a family plan. Prices also varied by region.
Once we analyzed it, it was quickly apparent the company asked people to pay substantially more for worse coverage. Double or quadruple what they were currently playing. A lot of people were going to be on a high deductible plan.
We were very transparent with members about that. We presented our findings to membership and they quickly realized this would not work for them. Frankly a lot of people were freaked out, which was understandable.
People told us they had significant health needs, or that their children do. “I cannot afford a plan on this marketplace that would allow my family to access care.” It was scary for a lot of people.
In good faith we put down proposals that we felt would be necessary for the marketplace to work. We also made it clear to the company that they were asking us to sacrifice quality of insurance. If we were going to give up control over quality they need to give us control over the price.
They realized that this was not going to work pretty quickly. They backed off the marketplace plan and proposed different plans than what we have, but still dedicated plans for our current membership which work a lot better. It was more affordable and closer in quality to what we have. We weren’t able to hang onto some of the legacy coverage, but we still have a plan that is relatively more affordable than the marketplace that has no deductible for in network care.
There will be a high deductible option, but it’s not the only affordable option. And the company will also put money in health savings accounts for people who opt for that plan. We also got them to agree to a cap on the year-to-year increases on the cost of insurance.
And the company was not in favor of a cap on employee healthcare premium increases?
We have a cap in our current contract. We were amenable to the idea that number might have to go up.
For several sessions they told us that keeping any cap was a nonstarter. That was the word they used. Nonstarter.
They eventually started agreeing to some level of a cap when we were in marathon bargaining a couple of weeks before we struck.
If I’m remembering correctly they were at 30% on the day before we started the strike. We told them that afternoon that we were going to strike. We were telegraphing that pretty hard for a while. We told them explicitly the deadline was midnight. They came back in at 11:30 p.m. with a 22% cap.
For us that was one of the things, looking at that proposal we knew we weren’t there yet. We knew we wouldn’t have something ratifiable at the time.
Later they moved to 20% and wouldn’t go lower than that. Then to 18% and said they wouldn’t go lower than that.
But we eventually got them to 15% while we were striking.
Y’all got the company to put a lot of money on the table while you were out for eight days, right?
It was north of $1 million. Over the course of the strike we got more money in up front bonus that covered the costs of us being on strike for eight days.
We increased the minimum pay tiers that will benefit many people now. And it’ll benefit future generations of Law360.
In addition to the percentage merit based annual bonus, we got an additional $500 lump sum bonus for everyone designed to help cover the cost of health insurance.
And you got retro pay too, right?
Retro pay back to March of this year.
And we got an additional round of increases one month after ratification. Additional general wage increases.
The minimum everyone is getting is 7% a increase. Plus a 2% general wage increase a month after ratification. We’ll also get a merit of an average of 2%.
Our lowest paid employees should all be looking at increases of somewhere around 20%.
Earlier this year the company announced several layoffs, what did y’all win for them?
We told them that our contract had expired and layoffs were illegal. Initially they were insisting on eight weeks of severance. We landed at 13 weeks of severance plus 13 weeks of COBRA healthcare coverage.
We wound up getting them 13 weeks instead of 8 weeks and also healthcare money which company wasn’t offering before the strike pledge.
Going back to the strike vote, how exactly did you get so many members to vote in favor of going on strike?
When we had the vote in February we thought we were entering the final phase. Then the company announced the health insurance marketplace and layoffs and everything slowed back down again.
We met with the company at the table a lot over the summer, but made less and less progress. We met every week in July and towards the end of month we realized they were very intransigent on some of this stuff. No healthcare cap. Insisting on no general wage increase at all at that point. They were still trying to undermine our just cause language. They didn’t move on any of that. We did a strike pledge and asked people to commit to be willing to go on strike in September if we didn’t have a deal. Of the 252 people in our unit, we had 236 sign the pledge.
Over 93%.
How do you do that?
A lot of it was the groundwork during the campaign. As a bargaining committee, we wanted to be transparent with people. We encourage people to come to bargaining. Even skeptical people were won over by tuning in on zoom and hearing how the company talked to us. We’re all coworkers and know we were all reasonable. People didn’t like the way management’s attorneys talked to us.
Building on that we had an amazingly robust Contract Action Team, or CAT. More than 40 people I think who had done their own groundwork having conversations with members and building relationships to establish trust and solidarity.
When it came down to it we had a unit meeting and talked to people about what a strike would mean and I think it was one of the things that did a lot with people. We showed people that we had put a lot of thought into this and had answers to their questions. Things like how healthcare worked on strike. Or unemployment. Questions from members on how strike pay worked and what if they were planning to be on vacation or were on parental leave.
Everyone had a lot of questions.
Wait, a union of journalists had a lot of questions?!
A union full of journalists wants answers to their questions!
We anticipated that. Some people had specific situations we hadn’t thought of before. If we didn’t have an answer we found out the answer and circled back with people.
The strike pledge didn’t come out of nowhere. It wasn’t the first time people were hearing from the bargaining committee during this process. For a lot of people it felt like the logical continuation. Especially for people who tuned into bargaining. Everyone saw we needed to do something.
There was also a lot of one-on-one outreach. Not only the CAT, but myself and others from the bargaining committee talked to people a lot.
Most people wanted a sense that the committee had a clear-eyed view of what we wanted. This was a goal-oriented process. We had a plan and a goal. This was not something we were doing lightly.
People were going to be taken care of. There would be strike pay. There would be a hardship fund. No one would be making their full salary up while on strike, but if worse came to worse, there would be something to make sure people were taken care of.
I don’t think it would have worked as well if we hadn’t built up a foundation over the previous year-and-a-half. And honestly over the past eight years of being a union.
Our union has been very strong because everyone in leadership wanted this to be a very democratic unit. People are encouraged to participate in meetings and we have a lot of committees. Maybe they’re interested in the editorial standards committee or the diversity committee. We have lots of ways for people to get involved and build trust with their coworkers outside the union leadership.
All of that marks a strong unit.
Did you say that the company paid folks enough money to cover their lost wages while they struck for eight days?
There was an interesting dynamic towards the end at the table. We were still pushing for a healthcare cap and higher general wage increase. We got some of that and didn’t get all the structural things we wanted.
Instead of doing structural things the company wanted to throw bonus money at us. They introduced a bunch of different bonuses that worked in different ways. But at the end we got them to agree to increase one of those bonuses by an amount of money that would make everyone more or less whole for eight days they were on strike.
The strike paid for itself — but more times over for increases in pay and that annual bonus that covers and protects people from rising healthcare costs.
Were you bargaining in person or over Zoom?
Some bargaining was in person.
Our committee was all in person for the past few weeks. Some of the management representatives were not in person. We’d meet with their attorney in person and usually at least someone from editorial management and sometimes other people from the management committee. At least some of their committee met over zoom. It was a strange dynamic.
What about your time when you got away from the table and joined the picket line?
The picket line was by far much more energizing and motivating than bargaining ever was. Being with your coworkers was great. The thing that made me tear up on the picket line — they made a chant up about the bargaining committee.
“BC we’ve got your back — our picket lines will make them crack!”
First time I heard it, it blew me away. If you’ve never had a group of people chant about you, I really recommend it. It’s incredible.
I heard there was a moment when a top editor complained to y’all and said you were having too much fun on the picket line. Was that true?
It was late at night on Monday night. Or it was Tuesday morning at that point. This was the day before we resolved the strike. Everyone was tired. We came back with a response and management wasn’t happy. They had been hoping to resolve the strike that night. Our feeling was that there was good momentum, but we couldn’t get it done by that morning. It made more sense to get rested and come back the next day. They really didn’t like that. They wanted us to keep working. I don’t know if that was some subconscious thing, like if they told us to keep working we should because they’re the bosses.
It became a combative exchange primarily with their attorney. Then the editor-in-chief made a comment that she thought we wanted to go out on strike this whole time.
That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Going on strike was difficult and scary for people, including the bargaining committee, who also did not get paid.
She made a comment about everyone on the picket line having fun. Something like, “It seems like everyone is having a great time. I don’t get it. Everyone can just come back to work.”
It was a surprising moment. It was very late and I’m sure that if she were maybe in a better frame of mind she would have spoken better. But it spoke to the disconnect sometimes between us and management.
From our perspective we were out here fighting for salaries that kept up with inflation. For healthcare that’s affordable to people and their families. Fighting to ensure that people are able to maintain their quality of life.
And that was something we were willing to make a financial sacrifice for. It’s nice to see your coworkers and feel like you’re part of something and feel solidarity. It’s just not something any of us would do for fun.
We did it for very serious reasons.
How did y’all react?
In the moment I don’t think any of us knew how to react. We were in the middle of arguing over specifics. They were doing a thing they did multiple times—trying to portray us as unreasonable.
Our unit chair made a very short statement about it the next morning.
It was offensive not just to us on the committee — we had a lot of members who stayed up to tune in to see if they were going to be on strike the next day.
Again, that might just be a fundamental difference between the union and management sometimes. Where just because they don’t understand our rationale or don’t want to understand our rationale — that doesn’t mean we’re doing it for the hell of it.
We’re doing it because these things are important to us as workers and these are things we’re willing to fight for.
To the extent we’re having a good time it’s because we do like each other and we’re a good group of people to come together and get things done. And that feels good. No one is going on strike just because it sounds like a fun idea! It involves a level of work to make sure it all happens and happens correctly.
Organizing a strike is a huge effort and one that we thought was worth it. And it wound up being worth it.
OK, final journalist question. Did I forget to ask you anything I should have?
The other thing we considered a big win got wrapped up before the strike. But we got 14 weeks of paid parental leave. That was more than double what we had before. That was a big thing for the campaign.
