We interrupt this lovely readalong for more HarperCollins union news.
Namely, the union is on strike. HarperCollins, the second largest publishing house in the United States, has made record profits (in the billions) but refuses to pay its employees a living wage or negotiate in good faith. Unlike the one-day strike earlier this year, this will be an open-ended strike, to last until a fair, good-faith contract is agreed upon.
I cannot overstate the implications here. HarperCollins is a 200-year-old behemoth with over 120 imprints, owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch. You have reads books from this company, I guarantee it. You have enjoyed movies and TV shows spawned by this company. The workers striking at the blood and sweat responsible for launching those properties you love. And as Harper goes, so goes the rest of the industry. If we raise the living standards for one, so the pressure increases on other companies to raise it for all.
The Harper Union need your support. They have a full thread here, but here’s the gist of what they’re asking:
EVERYONE:
- Donate to the strike fund if you can
- Politely email Harper’s HR ([email protected]) and the CEO ([email protected]) to express your support for the strike and the union.
- Boost their message on social media and among your social circles (here are some assets you can use to do that)
- If you are in the NY metro area, come join the picket line at 195 Broadway in Manhattan!
BLOGGERS/REVIEWERS/BOOKSTAGRAMMERS/BOOKTOKERS:
- If possible, please hold all reviews of Harper titles until the strike is over. (And I would add, if you feel comfortable doing so, tell Harper why.)
FREELANCERS/INDUSTRY HOPEFULS:
- Don’t be a scab. Don’t take new freelance projects or temporary positions while the strike is ongoing.
BOOKSTORES/BOOKSELLERS:
- Share the “I Stand With” graphic
- Print and distribute the union bookmark at your store
AUTHORS/AGENTS:
- Do not submit or sign new contracts to Harper until the union’s own contract is finalized.
———
Please note they are not asking for a boycott on Harper titles. A boycott would harm the authors, who have nothing to do with this, so the union is explicitly requesting no boycott.
Also, please do not @ Harper social accounts to yell at them. Direct all feedback to that peopleteam email. The majority of folks watching those accounts are out on the picket line anyways, and their managers have already been warned that, as non-union members, they risk termination if voice any public support for the strike.
For more info, check out the union’s accounts on Twitter and Instagram. I also recommend this Twitter thread for some hard facts and figures.
Want something you can share on TikTok? Check out Carmen’s video here.
Reblogging with some additional information in answer to notes, replies, and comments left on the original post, This addition is current as of November 11, 2022. (The post above is from November 10, 2022.)
- The union’s official Venmo is @HCPSolidarityFund, but I’m trying to get a current, official statement from them to link to here, so you don’t have to take my word for it.
- The Harper union is part of the UAW Local 2110. Their website is here. The union’s press release announcing the strike can be found here.
“I want to email but I don’t know what to say.”
Templates are tricky. If you copy-paste my words, HC can dismiss it as spam. Here’s what I would recommend trying:
- a greeting (”To whom it may concern” or “Dear HarperCollins” or just “Hi” works)
- introduce yourself in relation to who you are to them (a regular customer of their titles? a member of a Harper-related fandom? a concerned parent/teacher/librarian? an author? a bookseller? a potential future employee?)
- a statement of support (”I am writing in support of the ongoing strike because…”)
- an explicit notation on why they should care (should be framed in terms of Harper’s reputation, Harper’s clout, and/or Harper’s finances. How can YOU affect THEIR bottom line?)
- a line on what actions you wish to see them take
- your name
Voila. That’s like six sentences, tops. If you’d like, add in how you heard about the strike to give and how you plan to share the news even further to give a sense of scale. (see: the impact on Harper’s reputation.)
You can do it. I believe in you.
A brand/book/author you care about is definitely going to be affected
Here is a very incomplete list of just SOME of the books, brands, and authors published by HarperCollins:
Warrior Cats. Series of Unfortunate Events. Bridgerton. Wicked. Chronicles of Narnia. Lord of the Rings and the entire Tolkien backlist. Agatha Christie. Dorothy Sayers. E.B. White (his adult stuff and Charlotte’s Web, Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little). School for Good and Evil. Amelia Bedelia. Goodnight Moon. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Harold and the Purple Crayon. Frog and Toad. Master and Commander. The Princess Diaries. The Queen’s Thief Series. Red Queen. The Hate U Give. Dumplin. The One and Only Ivan. New Kid. Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. They Both Die at the End. Ella Enchanted. Beverly Cleary. Wayside School. Bridge to Terabithia. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Where the Wild Things Are and other titles by Maurice Sendak. Where the Sidewalk Ends and other titles by Shel Silverstein. All of the I Can Read books. Bel Canto. American Gods (and a bunch of other stuff by Neil Gaiman, incl. Coraline and Stardust.) All of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. Pretty Little Liars. To Kill a Mockingbird. The Little Bear books. The Divergent series. Little House on the Prairie. The Abhorsen books. Howl’s Moving Castle and Diana Wynne Jones’s other books. Splat the Cat. Flat Stanley. Babel by R.F. Kuang. Song of Achilles. Anthony Bourdain’s books. Barbara Kingsolver. Anthony Horowitz. EVERYTHING under the Harlequin and Avon imprints. EVERYTHING under Zondervan and Thomas Nelson. The Little Prince. Life of Pi. Ursula Le Guin. Virginia Woolf. The Princess Bride. The Handmaid’s Tale. Fancy Nancy. Zora Neale Hurston. Neal Stephenson. Becky Chambers. Clive Barker. Michael Crichton. Sarah Plain and Tall. R.A. Salvatore. Mitch Albom. Aldous Huxley. Anne Hillerman. Michael Chabon. FGTeeV.
200 years of history. 200 years of gobbling up other companies, other imprints.
You. Are. Affected.
This strike is not anti-Harper/anti-tradpub
Listen, I get it. Some of y’all have some rightful bones to pick with HarperCollins and/or traditional publishing. But the brave people forgoing their livelihood indefinitely in order to demand livable wages, increased diversity in the workplace, and union protections—demands that will affect our entire industry—ARE HarperCollins, far more than the C-Suite execs they’re fighting against. It is the latter group, the VPs and executives who roll up the ladder after themselves, who are the barrier here, not HarperCollins as embodied by the stressed out and in debt subrights coordinator marching on the sidewalk.
I agree, stick it to The Man, especially when that man is Rupert Murdoch, but this isn’t about “taking Harper down a peg” or “burning tradpub to the ground.” This is about bettering working conditions and providing a more equitable, sustainable environment for hundreds of passionate, dedicated people and thereby further opening the door for those who come after them.
This strike highlights issues that are endemic to publishing as a whole
Publishing is white. Publishing is rich. Publishing is layer upon layer of privilege and power and invisible hurdles like you wouldn’t believe.
The union is asking for three things:
- livable wages
- an increased commitment to diversity
- better union protections
All three are intertwined. Until the 2020 protests, standard entry level salaries were at $35k, which is below the poverty level for NYC (where employees are required to live.) Harper raised their base salaries after the protests, after a lot of public lip service to diversity, and after literally EVERY other competitor raised their salaries first. Current entry level salaries at Harper are $45k, which is still less than a year’s rent in New York. (Food? Electricity? Who needs it!) Employees are expected to take on additional jobs to survive. That’s standard. Employees are also expected to work overtime without pay. Again, this is standard across the industry, not just at Harper.
The people who survive are people with wealth, people with privilege, or people who make it only so far and then burn out spectacularly. The churn in this industry is unreal. This also leads in to Harper’s lip service to diversity in the workplace. BIPOC folks, disabled folks, folks without significant financial support, even once they managed to get through the door, retention is abysmal. Again, standard across publishing.
Harper has done a heck of a job at trying to gut the union. The amount of union busting even in “normal times” was unreal. And yet Harper remains the only US publisher in “the Big Four” with a union.
If the union can pull off a win here, raised salaries will apply pressure for their competitors to follow suit. Same for tangible, practical, enforced commitments to diversity. And if the union wins, more may appear in other houses, keeping the cycle of change rolling forward. And this is not limited to the United States. We are an interconnected global world. May actions here inspire further actions abroad.
So again, thank you all for your support. If you have specific questions and want to make sure I see, send an ask or DM.
Let’s get crap done.
November 30, 2022
The Harper Union is still on strike. Harper’s HR, which publicly tried to position themselves as “bargaining in good faith” has yet to even reach out to the union.
It’s been fifteen days without even an attempt at a deal, and Harper has begun hiring scabs.
Now is the time for more pressure, not less.
December 6, 2022
Still on strike. Worse, the CEO, Brian Murray, sent an open letter to authors and agents rife with spin, misinformation, and outright lies—everything from claiming that the requested salary increase would be “higher than any other competitor” (it’s not), that they give generous benefits like ample time off (which by their accounting includes federal holidays like Christmas—but not Christmas Eve or literally any other day in December! can’t have that!—and also using that time off is aggressively discouraged by management), to pledging to remain “ready and willing” to negotiate in good faith when they’ve yet to speak to the union and have tried to recruit scabs from local bookstore staff and publishing courses.
I am eagerly looking forward to the union’s rebuttal letter in the style of their last round of edits, but that’s the only thing I’m pleased about. As a former employee, I feel sick for my friends and colleagues who are being so poorly mistreated by their company. As an industry colleague, I’m disheartened. I left Harper on good terms, but now I can’t imagine myself ever going back. They’ve shown themselves to be violently opposed to the wellbeing of the very people who make the company what it is. And as an author, I cannot at present see a future in which I would willingly submit a manuscript to any portion of Harper, knowing that anyone left is miserable, mistreated, or a scab.
I am posting this information twice, once here and once on its own, since this thread has gotten long. I’m also going to sit down and write an email to the People team, impressing upon them exactly what they’re losing by being so vile. I recommend you all do the same, and donate to the union, if you can. It’s going to be a long fight.
Wasn’t expecting to update this soon, but there are developments.
As with the last, I’ll drop this new information in a second, individual post as well for folks whose eyes glaze over at the length, but this will keep everything together.
December 8, 2022
The Harper union is STILL ON STRIKE but there are two new ways to help. (The other ways are listed above.)
1. Sign this open letter of support from the union to Brian Murray and Harper HR. For independent verification, they’ve posted about it on their Twitter and Instagram. (And once you do, share the link with the graphic!)
2. Maybe you can’t swing donating to the strike fund, but mayyyybe you’re looking to invest in your own writing career or you need a gift for a writer in your life? A bunch of publishing professionals, authors, agents, etc., are hosting Q&A sessions and all proceeds will go straight to supporting the union through the holidays. They have a suggested price of $20, but anything counts!
The holidays are rough because the industry goes into a bit of a lull, which means less natural pressure on Harper… but the union members still aren’t receiving wages. So let’s amp up that pressure and make sure everyone makes it safely into the new year!
January 3, 2023
Annnd we’re back again as the union enters WEEK EIGHT of the strike. Harper has begun hiring temps (untrained scabs) to fill their gaps. So that’s fun. I’m sure the authors and agents are stoked to learn their titles are being handled by folks who don’t know what middle grade is or how to navigate DAM and TitleNet. (As someone pointed out on Twitter, another unappreciated labor of junior staff is teaching newcomers how to actually do the job!)
So please, keep writing to Harper, keep donating to the strike fund, and keep sharing the news online and in real life with real people you know. Publishing is a bubble but the impact needs to be felt outside the bubble as well.
January 20, 2023
It’s been over FIFTY days. The strike is still ongoing. Harper has yet to even speak to the union.
Union members are still scraping on their second and third hustles (which most entry-level publishing people have) and donations to the strike fund. The union has set up a hardship fund (here’s the post about it on their official Instagram, for verification) so no more fiddling with checks or Venmo.
If you can donate, please do.
And whether you can or can’t, please do still share.
Non-Union employees of the Harper company, specifically those at Harlequin and Carina, have recently joined the picket line in a wonderful show of solidarity. Harper responded by attempting to set marginalized authors against them. Do not let them be successful. Keep the pressure in the right place. The junior staff at Harlequin are not blocking opportunities for marginalized authors. The management at Harper is, and they could solve the issue IMMEDIATELY if they chose to.
