The Writers Guild of America, East has ratified four contracts with Vice Media, covering the staffer at at VICE Editorial, VICE News, VICELAND and Vice Digital, which means writers for TV news, documentaries, nonfiction series and digital news.
The contracts include both renewals of 2016 agreements and new first-time agreements.
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According to WGAE, the contracts include "companywide policies and practices, including codifying anti-harassment and anti-bias policies and trainings, stipulating gender pronoun use in the workplace, providing gold standard benefits for transgender and people that identify as gender non-conforming, enacting explicit protections against online harassment and a commitment to interviewing diverse candidates for open positions. The contracts also include robust non-discrimination language pertaining to race, gender identify, socio-economic status, criminal convictions and more."
They also include salary increases in each year those contracts, a committee to talk about freelance contributors, union security and union representatives present for potential harassment complaints.
“We are very pleased by the concrete gains negotiated for people who craft content on the entire range of platforms, and we look forward to a productive relationship with VICE management for years to come," said Lowell Peterson, executive director of WGAE.
